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It has an advanced feature set that includes load-balanced FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting, SSL, and more. It has a very low memory footprint compared to other web servers, and usually a lower CPU load. Lighttpd is a secure, fast, compliant, and flexible web server that’s optimized for high-performance environments. Market Share for Top Servers Across All Domains from August 1995 to July 2011 (Source: Netcraft) The best-known alternative open source HTTP servers are lighttpd, nginx, and Cherokee. In some situations other web servers can perform better. Apache is a reliable server, but it takes considerable memory to run. Alternative HTTP serversĪpache powers more than 70% of websites today, but new alternatives are gaining market share. However, it retains much of the stability of a process-based server by keeping multiple processes available, each with many threads. By using threads to serve requests, it is able to serve a large number of requests with fewer system resources than a process-based server.
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A request generally corresponds to a single process on a Linux server.īy contrast, Multi-Processing Module Worker (MPM worker) implements a hybrid multi-process multi-threaded server. MPM prefork is also the best MPM for isolating each request, so that a problem with a single request will not affect any other.
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#Alternatives to php runner install#
In many distribution, including Debian and Red Hat, when you install mod_php the system automatically installs the MPM prefork version of the Apache package.
#Alternatives to php runner code#
Typically, any non-trivial Apache module (such as mod_php, a module that Apache can load to serve PHP dynamic pages) has some sort of non-thread-safe library or has non-thread-safe code in it, so when in doubt use the MPM prefork. Multi-Processing Module Prefork (MPM prefork) implements a non-threaded, pre-forking web server that is appropriate for sites that need to avoid threading for compatibility with non-thread-safe libraries. Technically, Apache consists of a daemon on Unix or a service under Microsoft Windows, which, depending on the settings in a configuration file, provides access to one or multiple sites (virtual hosts), manages security features, and can accommodate extensions to serve active or dynamic pages, such as PHP or, for Java developers, it allow to communcate with Tomcat.Īn Apache HTTP server can be configured to work in either of two ways. One of the oldest extant web servers, and the most popular, Apache, has come a long way since it was released in 1995. If you need to embed dynamic text, such as the result of queries on databases, into static text, you’ll find PHP extremely useful. The PHP scripting language resembles JavaScript, Java, and Perl, all of which share a common ancestor, the C programming language. In general an HTTP or web server sends browser clients a requested page, usually in HTML code, or a page dynamically created with a language such as PHP, one of the most common programming languages for web pages. But don’t worry – you can turn to one of these alternative solutions too, and improve your web server throughput without upgrading your hardware resources.įirst, some background. This is an article of mine, already published on waziĭo you have problems serving more than two pages per second on your WordPress or Drupal blog? Do the sites of your competitors serve pages faster than yours? Their secret weapon may be a different web server and PHP combo than Apache and mod_php.
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