Using Mac OS X Lion Server

Chapter 5. Wikis, Webs, and Blogs

Lion’s web service is open source at its finest. Based on Apache, one of the most popular web engines of all time, the service can host the most complicated of web sites, while being so easy to use that you can start it up by clicking an ON button. The tricky part (and the reason this chapter isn’t just one paragraph) is getting the web service to configure wikis and blogs, to run multiple websites on one server, to get specific mods running, and of course, to do all of this securely.

Apache got its name from being “a patchy” product. Many of the aspects of the web that we interact with on a daily basis are made from these patches, known as mods (short for modules). Mods can be enabled or disabled as needed, with each not only providing additional functionality but also providing security concerns and potentially enabling features you may not want (or need).

In this chapter, we’ll look at setting up websites, configuring wikis and blogs, and other tasks common in Lion Server environments. We won’t dive too heavily into customizing the Apache configuration outside of the options exposed in the GUI, although there are countless things you can do using the Apache, PHP, and other configuration options, such as clustering, securing PHP, enabling options for Perl, and of course, setting up various Ruby on Rails options.

Setting Up a Website

The first step to setting up any web server is to enable the service, which sets up the initial web portal. ...