Web Server Freeware

Many people are now starting to use the term LAMP which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP / Perl / Python. Those pieces of software are all free and open source yet run some of the most sophisticated and most popular websites on the internet. When you begin to design your website, be sure to read about HTML Hell so you know what not to do.


Sort by My Recommendation, Newest First, Best Rated, Program Name [A-Z]

  no screenshot

Apache is an open source web server that runs on Linux or Windows. While there are easier ones to setup, Apache is the most widely used because it is fast, secure, extensible, and extremely powerful. As of Nov. 2004, Netcraft stated that Apache is used to host about 68% of all web sites.
read the full description...
 


PHP excellent
  no screenshot

PHP is a server side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML. PHP is most often used to create dynamic websites that pull information from a database (such as MySQL). My website uses PHP (as evident by the .php extension on all of my pages).
read the full description...
 


  no screenshot

MySQL is a fast and reliable open source database. In fact, it is the most popular open source database in the world. MySQL integrates well with PHP.
read the full description...
also see phpMyAdmin


totally replaces phpBB no screenshot

SMF is by far the easiest forum software I have ever used in terms of installation, installing mods, daily use, and administration. I have read plenty of articles saying that it is both faster and more secure than phpBB. They have even created an API so you can easily integrate the forum into your php driven web site.
read the full description...
Demo installation (username: test / password: test)


  no screenshot

iSearch is a PHP based search engine that indexes your website and stores the results in a MySQL database. It also will automatically spider your site to keep the index up to date. Every respectable site should have it's own search engine.
read the full description...
 


  no screenshot

phpMyAdmin is a management tool written in PHP to administrate a MySQL database. It uses a web based interface. It can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields, manage privileges, and export data into various formats.
read the full description...
requires MySQL


  no screenshot

Media Wiki is the software that powers Wikipedia. A Wiki is a set of pages on a website where any reader can freely modify the content of the page or even add new pages. You can require that users register to get permission to change the wiki. Media Wiki keeps a history of all changes to a page to allow you to easily restore a page to an earlier state. For another great example of how MediaWiki can be used for different sites, take a look at what F-Spot has done with it.
read the full description...
 


  no screenshot

Perl is a programming language that is most commonly used to write CGI scripts for web sites. Perl is most often used to work with text files since it does this extremely well. Perl has been called the Internet's "duct tape" because it is used for just about everything on the web. Perl has a rather unusual syntax but there so many scripts available on the web that you can download one and modify it to meet your specific needs. I personally like PHP over Perl for most things.
read the full description...