httpd
Getting a server
For forms to be of use you have got to have got to be able to publish your Web pages and
write a program to receive the form results. For PC Windows 3.1, this currently means
running NCSA's httpd (hyper-text transfer protocol daemon), accessible
web-wise at this alisa site with the
zipped up software available here by ftp.
Note these resources are only available from 6pm to 6am PST. The people there are
working on WebSite, an NT server.
The main equivalent for NT, HTTPS, is available at
EMWAC; however I have
not checked whether the CGI executable format works in NT. On a 486DX/66 with 8MB
RAM approximately 8 requests per second can be handled by httpd.
Configuration
httpd is configurable. You can set up the IP port and basic directory tree that is
visible, along with aliases to other parts of the file system. httpd can automatically
generate pretty directory listings as a HTML page, if a directory's index file is not
available. There is pretty comprehensive access control, with users and groups of users
allowed access to the whole service, or on a by-directory basis. There's logging of errors
and accesses. httpd picks up the list of MIME types that it can serve to the world; yes,
that's the same MIME as used by the mail system to send messages of different types, eg
text, audio, etc. (HTML is one of these MIME types).
Be Connected
To be of any use, your PC has got to have a permanent connection to the world. If you
use a dial-up service then you cannot have people dialling you back in; some service
providers allow you to put up pages on their host, possibly charging. That said, you can
reference httpd running on your own PC to do your testing. However you could set up a
free standing system on your local network - even a serial link between two PCs will do.
Having a good server and browser almost make it worthwhile setting up TCP/IP on your
network just for local pretty information dissemination and collection. Alternatively, you
could publish your Web pages on a Sun, but run a PC executable on a separate PC
running httpd.
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