In this Tutorial, we are going to teach you how to Setup and Configure Apache on Admin RDP (2012, 2016, 2019) step by step. When you are dealing with the world of web hosting and servers or using local hosts on your personal computer, you have probably come across the name Apache. If you would like to know what the Apache web server is and how you can configure it, join us in this article. Apache is developed by Apache Software Foundation and is available to users. Apache web server is the most popular and famous web server in the world. The Apache HTTP server (Apache HTTP Server), often referred to as Apache, has played a key role in the development of the web and the Internet.

What is Apache?

Apache is a free Open-Source program used with web servers to manage web applications as well as resources. This program supports Perl and PHP languages and runs on most operating systems and runs in the background of an operating system and delivers content such as HTML pages, multimedia, and CSS Style tabs over the Internet. This web server is an application developed in 1995 by the Apache Software Foundation, which has become the most widely used software on the World Wide Web today.

Apache supports more than 60% of all websites. It supports many operating systems. These include Free Security, Linux (all distributions), Mac OS X, Windows, and more.

Apache Features

Apache has special features and the most common application of this program is related to htaccess, which is using by professional designers in the Linux environment. Here are some of the features of Apache:

– Apache is open-source and free, and even free for commercial use

– Reliable, stable, flexible

– Security items are updated regularly

– Has a module-based structure

– Has a simple configuration

– Cross-platform (works on Unix and Windows servers)

– Compatible with WordPress websites

How to Download Apache on Admin RDP Server

In this section, we want to deal with Setup Apache on Admin RDP. The first step is to log in to your Admin RDP. Open Remote Desktop by searching your Windows Start menu. Then enter the desired IP to enter the RDP Admin and click Connect. If you are asked for a password, you must enter the server login password. If you do these steps successfully, you will become an Admin RDP environment.

After successfully entering the Admin RDP environment, you must open one of the browsers you want. Then, you must download the Apache webserver.

You should also have C++ Redistributable Visual Studio because the Apache webserver needs it to run on Windows. You can download this by clicking on vc_redist_x86 for a 32-bit operating system and vc_redist_x64 for a 64-bit operating system and then install it.

Once the Apache download is complete, you should go to the location where you downloaded the file. Then you have to extract it in the place you want. Note that after unzipping the file, you should see the files of this web server. In the next step, we will teach you how to configure Apache.

Setup and Configure Apache on Admin RDP

Now is the time to configure Apache. First, you should locate the file “httpd.conf” and open it in a standard text editor. Apache can be installed anywhere on the system, but you must change the SVROOT settings to indicate your compressed location:

Define SRVROOT "C:/Apache24" → Define SRVROOT "D:/Apache"

If the httpd.conf file does not have the SRVROOT variable, update everything manually as in the following examples:

ServerRoot "C:/Apache24" → ServerRoot "D:/Apache"

DocumentRoot "C:/Apache24/htdocs" → DocumentRoot "D:/Apache/htdocs"

<Directory "C:/Apache24/htdocs"> → <Directory "D:/Apache/htdocs">

ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "C:/Apache24/cgi-bin/" → ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "D:/Apache/cgi-bin/"

1- Now you need to add ExecCGI to the Options directory and locate the following line:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks

and then you must append “ExecCGI”:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI

This means in Apache that CGI/Perl scripts are allowed outside of the CGI-bin director.

2- You need to find and uncomment the following line by removing the # sign from the beginning of the line:

AddHandler CGI-script .cgi

and then add the following line to it:

AddHandler CGI-script .pl

These two lines show how to handle the .cgi / .pl file to Apache.

3- You should add the following command to the end of the httpd.conf file:

ScriptInterpreterSource Registry

This allows Apache to ignore the first line of .cgi / .pl files and instead determine the location of Perl through the Windows registry.

How to Setup Apache on Admin RDP

Now it’s time to start Apache. First, go to the Apache extraction location and open the command windows/PowerShell prompt in the bin folder.

After opening the command prompt, enter the “httpd.exe” command to start Apache.

Note: If you open the PowerShell prompt, you must enter the command “D:\Apache\bin\httpd.exe” to start Apache.

Now you should allow access as appropriate after seeing a Windows Firewall prompt. The point to note is that you must have access to Apache through the firewall. Otherwise, other devices will not be able to connect to the web server. So allow access accordingly:

At this point, you should check the Apache. Go to http://127.0.0.1 from your web browser, provided the previous command window is open. If Apache is running, you must see the image below.

Note: To exit Apache, just close the command/PowerShell window.

Now you should install Apache as a Windows service. After that, you make sure it runs all the time. To do this, open the command prompt again and enter the following command:

httpd.exe -k install

Or if you open PowerShell, you can run the following command:

Start-Process PowerShell -Verb RunAs

Then you should enter:

& "D:\Apache\bin\httpd.exe" -k install

Now you must receive a message that Apache is installed.

Type the following command to start the service:

net start Apache2.4

Apache has an “Apache Monitor” with which you can control the current state of the Apache server and start, stop, or restart the server. Double-click ApacheMonitor.exe to run the utility. Also, to run it automatically when Windows starts put a shortcut in the Startup folder.

You can press WinKey+R and type “shell:common startup” to access the Startup folder faster, in Admin RDP.

Conclusion

We first mentioned the Apache web server and some of its features. Then, we taught you how to configure and setup the Apache web server in RDP admin. You can easily use this web server by using the step-by-step tutorials in this article.