The rise of lighttpd.
If you haven’t heard of it already, and you deal with the hosting of any sort of a website on a frequent basis, you may want to look into lighttpd. It is truly a remarkable HTTP server. And according to Netcraft’s data for the past few months, more and more people are beginning to realize the power that lighttpd holds.
One of the main benefits I find with it is that it is very simple to configure and use, while still offering the essential features one needs. Unlike with other web servers, it’s quite easy to download the lighttpd source code, have it built and installed within a few minutes, and have it suitably configured a couple of minutes later. The example configuration file is quite easy to figure out, and the comments are very helpful. And it is quite portable, supporting a wide variety of operating systems.
As mentioned earlier, it is quite capable. A glance at the “Tutorials” section of their wiki goes to show the true power lighttpd offers. It works quite well with a wide variety of technologies, including CGI scripts, Ruby on Rails, Pylons, TurboGears, Django, Quixote, webpy, Mongrel, Catalyst, Mason, Joomla, AWStats, and so much more.
Lighttpd also offers a fairly large number of bundled modules that are often very useful. Go check out that list of modules for yourself. You’ll notice that it lists essentially all of the modules that a smaller or mid-sized site would need. The covered functionality includes logging, virtual hosting, caching, access restrictions, and so forth.
The next time you’re considering the use of Apache, IIS or some other HTTP server, stop and give lighttpd some consideration. It may be just the solution you’re looking for, in terms of efficiency, extensibility, capability and affordability.
July 21st, 2007 at 3:33 pm
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July 21st, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I would suggest to consider Nginx (http://wiki.codemongers.com/Nginx) as a more reliable solution.
lighttpd disappointed many users (myself included) with memory leakage and other strange behaviours.
Nginx has prooved to be stable, reliable and to be ready to handle large amount of traffic.
July 23rd, 2007 at 12:34 am
Cherokee, which offers a similar featureset to lighttpd, is significantly smaller and cleaner. I’m not quite sure why anyone uses lighttpd, but I could see making an argument for Cherokee.