PLTW Web ServerAbout This Server
There are many components to a web server which you can think of as
"layers". First you have the hardware, then the operating
system, then the web server software itself, then any other add-on
modules you might add such as server side scripting to support
development of web applications running PHP or Python, and also
database services for applications which may require them.
Hardware
This web server is running on an ASUS M32 Series PC, AMD A10-6700 CPU, with 12GB DDR3 RAM, integrated graphics card and 2TB SATA HDD.
OS
This machine is currently running Ubuntu 22.04, a user-friendly version of Linux with its origins in the Debian family tree.
Apache
Apache powers 52% of all websites globally, and is by far the most popular web server.
PHP
PHP is the most popular server side web scripting language, and will be but used extensively in CSP class. Perhaps you've heard of Javascript, server-side programming is different. Javascript is interpreted by your browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Exploder, etc) when it loads a web page. Any Javascript on web pages you visit is downloaded along with the html itself. This is one reason why Javascript can be insecure if you're not careful.
In contrast, server-side languages such as PHP, Python, Perl, and others run on the web server itself, which then typically generate a dynamic web page with html, javascript, or whatever.
MySQL
Many web sites and applications such as blogs, wikis, and so on rely on a database hosted on the web server. Any site with dynamic information will typically incorporate a database to store the changing content. Structured Query Language, or SQL is the language used for interacting with database content, and MySQL (pronounced "my sequel" is the most common implementation of SQL. This server runs a MySQL server for database-driven applications which we will explore in CSP
All Together Now
Put it all together, and you have what is sometimes referred to as the "LAMP" stack: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP.