Title: Getting Started: Installing webserver software and publishing your website
Title: Installing webserver software and publishing your website
Date: 2019-01-14
Category: fundamentals
Tags: server, router, introduction, lan, wan
@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ Author: hbsc & friends
Status: published
# SUPER UNDER CONSTRUCTION
TODO: add good dns registry reference
##Introduction
@ -22,14 +23,14 @@ The instructions on this guide were run on a Debian Stretch distribution.
- A spare computer.
- A basic understanding of the command line.
- An [ssh server and client](ssh.html) installed
- An [ssh server and client](demystifying-ssh.html) installed
- A registered domain name
- Have an available power socket next to your router.
- An ethernet cable to connect your server to the router.
## Installing Apache
The Apache HTTP server is a free and open-source web server software and it has been around since 1995, being the most widely used server software in the world. Because of this, documentation is plentiful and the support community is very large, meaning that help is quite easy to get for any of your server issues.
The Apache HTTP server is a free and open-source web server software and it has been around since 1995, being the most widely used server software in the world. Because of this, documentation is plentiful and the support community is very large, meaning that help is quite easy to get for any of your server issues.
For this reason, Apache has been selected for this guide.
There are, of course, other web server software available, the most popular of which being Nginx. Nginx, which is also free and open-source software, arrived on the scene circa 2004, and it has also become a favourite for its resource efficiency.
# For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
# enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
@ -157,9 +158,15 @@ Enable this configuration by running:
$ sudo a2ensite mydomain.org
```
Restart Apache to load the new configuration:
```bash
$ sudo service apache2 restart
```
## HTTPS
HTTPS, which stands for *hypertext transfer protocol secure*, is an extension of the HTTP protocol. As its name suggests, it adds a layer of security to the data exchanged between client and server. By adding an encryption layer to the exchanged packets, it seeks to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks, eavesdropping, etc.
HTTPS, which stands for *hypertext transfer protocol secure*, is an extension of the HTTP protocol. As its name suggests, it adds a layer of security to the data exchanged between client and server. By adding an encryption layer to the exchanged packets, it seeks to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks, eavesdropping, etc. While HTTP uses port 80 by default, HTTPS uses port 443.
As part of its bigger goal to "encrypt the entire Internet", the [Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://certbot.eff.org/about/) developed Certbot, a free and open source tool for automating the server-side deployment of [Let's Encrypt Certificates](https://letsencrypt.org/), thus enabling HTTPS.
@ -181,6 +188,96 @@ Run Certbot to get the right certificates for your domain:
```bash
$ sudo certbot certonly -d myserver.org
```
After following the process, and if all went well, you should now see the following message:
```
- Congratulations! Your certificate and chain have been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.org/fullchain.pem
Your key file has been saved at:
/etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.org/privkey.pem
Your cert will expire on 2019-09-24. To obtain a new or tweaked
version of this certificate in the future, simply run certbot
again. To non-interactively renew *all* of your certificates, run
"certbot renew"
- If you like Certbot, please consider supporting our work by:
Donating to ISRG / Let's Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/donate
Donating to EFF: https://eff.org/donate-le
```
Now, it is time to edit your etc/apache2/sites-available/mydomain.conf file accordingly:
In case you didn't notice, there is now an if statement that evaluates true in case a certain module is present. In this case, it evaluates to true if [mod_ssl](http://www.modssl.org/) is present. [Apache modules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apache_modules) can be installed as following:
```bash
$ sudo a2enmod modulename
```
To verify which modules are already running on your server, type:
```bash
$ sudo apache2ctl -M
```
If the required ssl_module is not listed, run:
```bash
$ sudo a2enmod ssl
```
Time to restart Apache and load all of these changes!
## index.html
At this point, when typing https://mydomain.org into your browser, you're greeted with a page that looks a little something like this:
If you cd into your /var/www/html folder, you will find this default index.html. As recommended by this page itself, you should edit this file before continuing operations on your webserver.
Open it on your favourite text editor and let's get started on a bare-bones "Hello Homebrew World"! webpage.
```html
<!doctype html>
<htmllang="en">
<head>
<metacharset="utf-8">
<title>My first homebrewed webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello Homebrew World!</h1>
</body>
</html>
```
Open your browser again and savour the fruits of your hard work.
That was it! Now you are ready to have hours of endless fun sailing the vast sea of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.
lidia pereira
5 years ago