from basic web serving to highly advanced server configurations. Since Apache

is open source, developers can even extend it beyond the basics, thereby

making Apache's feature set infinite.

Apache is secure.

The Apache security controls are very flexible and very powerful. You can

specify access control on a particular directory or a particular file, for a

particular user, for a group of users, for a particular IP address or a group

of IP addresses. All of these settings can be made in the Apache configuration

file httpd.conf. In other words you can restrict access of a particular file

to a particular user coming from a particular IP address, at the lowest level.

The standard socket level security mechanism, SSL, is also available as an

Apache module, available freely from openssl.org. This is a standard way of

encrypting data transmission between a web client and server.

Apache has extensive logging.

Apache allows webmasters with extensive options of logging access information

to the site. By default Apache uses the "Common Logfile Format" (CLF), which

is a standard format for logging access to the server. However, users can

specify their own custom format for logging. Apache also tracks other

variables of access such as User Agent (the browser), Referrer and even User

tracking similar to session maintenance.

Apache is modular.

The way to extend the functionality of Apache is through a standard mechanism

called modules. Modules are pieces of code that conform to the Apache API. A

particular module provides a single piece of well-defined functionality. The

server can load these modules in two ways, either by statically compiling it

in httpd or by building it as a shared object and loading it in the Apache

configuration file httpd.conf. For example, security functionality provided by

SSL is available as an Apache module. Java servlet support is also a module.

This modular architecture makes the functionality of Apache only limited by

the available number of modules (there are many!)

Apache allows you to extend the functionality of your web site.

It is possible to extend the functionality of your server by writing a

specific module that performs this task. There are various documents,

tutorials and published books, which detail the process of writing a module

for Apache. These modules are written in C and conform to the Apache API.

Dynamic sites are easy with Apache.