The Soothingly Seamless Setup of Apache, SSL, MySQL, and PHP (
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The much anticipated update to our original article on getting Apache, MySQL, Mod_SSL, and PHP to work seamlessly with each other is finally here! Ever try to get Apache, Mod_SSL, PHP, and MySQL all working in harmony on the same box? It's a very difficult task, but article author Israel Denis Jr. has come up with detailed instructions for compiling all these and getting them working together seamlessly to make the killer server software system.Our objective is to install a web server that will allow us to host sites, that
would be secure for e-commerce solutions, and that could be driven via scripts
to connect to a database server and extract its data.
The tools for the
job are:
- Apache -- A Web Server
- Mod_SSL -- A module for Secure Sockets Layer
- OpenSSL -- Open Source Toolkit (required for Mod_SSL)
- RSARef -- Only necessary for those in the US
- MySQL -- A Database Server
- PHP -- A Scripting Language
NOTE: All of these packages are free
and are available for download on the net.
We are using just one of the
many configurations that will fill our objective. We choose it because it is one
of the simplest and fastest. We chose Apache because it is probably the most
versatile web server ever to exist. Apache has the largest server market share
partly because it is free, but mostly because it is the best. Mod_SSL and
OpenSSL are added for the ability to conduct secure connections and because they
are among the fastest and easiest to configure and setup. PHP is a simple, yet
powerful scripting language which integrates easily with MySQL a powerful
relational database server.
Hopefully after completing this guide, we
will have achieved the following:
- Installed and setup the MySQL database server
-> Know how to check
the status of the MySQL server
-> Know how to access the MySQL server
using the command line client
-> Know how to access your database server
from the web
- Installed and setup the Apache web server with SSL
-> Configure a
simple virtual web site
-> Know how to stop and start the server
-> Know how to do some basic hosting configuration
- Installed and setup the PHP 4.0 Hypertext Preprocessor for
server-side-scripting
-> Know how to write simple php code
-> Know
how to connect to a DB using php
-> Create a simple site that is enabled
with PHP to talk to a database
- Create some sample certificates to use with Apache SSL
-> Know how to
generate a CSR file
-> know how to encrypt a key
-> Know how to
sign your own certificates
In this article, quite a bit of information
will be covered. We mean for it to be an introductory guide to get you started
in the world of e-commerce, web site scripting, and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL),
for the purpose of creating secure web sites driven by dynamic information
stored in databases.
By no means is this article meant to be a detailed
comprehensive document. We hope that it will help you get up and running with
the aforementioned products, and hopefully get a better understanding of how
everything works.
Our goal is to write this document so that any newbie
can understand what we are talking about. If we have accomplish this, then we
have done a good job. If you walk away wanting to create e-commerce sites, than
we have done an excellent job.... :-) send us some comments.
