Have you ever wanted to be able to access your files from almost any computer in the world? Ever had a big file that you needed to transfer that was either too big for a floppy or too small to waste an entire CD on? One solution is to have a dedicated web/file server that costs thousands. If you do not have thousands to spend, what options do you have left? This tutorial will show you how to integrate a web server into your current system for free. By the time you are finished reading this tutorial, you should be able to successfully serve files to any computer actively connected to the internet.

This article is written for beginners who know nothing about HTTP and its components. However, you should have a decent amount of knowledge about computers, and how they work, to run a web server. So if you don’t know whether your connection is broadband, this tutorial is probably not for you. Please save yourself some headaches and do not run a web server on 56k.

This tutorial is a basic install, setup, and configuration guide. I will go into some detail on how HTTP works, just enough for beginners to familiarize themselves with it.

By the time you are done reading this article, you should be able to accomplish the following things:

• Setup and Install the AppServ program to work with PHP 5.0, MySQL, and Apache


• Setup and Install a few http://www.no-ip.com dynamic IP programs


• Serve files between any web accessible computers


• Understand the basics of HTTP