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I'm looking for a Personal web server to host very light traffic meant for home use only.

What is your take on personal web servers that meet some or most of the criteria below?

  • Free/Open source
  • Runs on Windows and possibly Linux (Ubuntu)
  • Very light on resources
  • No installation required or standalone file
  • Admin console - GUI or Web based
  • Supports multiple hosts/port mappings

I have tried Abyss who's standard edition is free but limited to one host only. I've seen lite speed, haven't tried though XAAMP is another one I'm considering...

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10 Answers 10

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Apache is not the lightest, but it still doesn't use that many resources. It is free, and is kind of the standard of webservers. It would be my recommendation.

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  • its feature rich and powerful, close to IIS or even beats it maybe, but as u said, its not light and i don't need something as heavy as that. besides the fact that it uses java and i don't use JRE or anything java at all.
    – Mrchief
    Mar 1, 2010 at 18:13
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    Apache does not require Java. Two popular lighter ones are nigix and lightpd, I still recommend Apache. You can compile it and configure it to be pretty light. Can use the threaded model, configure it to have less threads etc...
    – Kyle Brandt
    Mar 1, 2010 at 18:28
  • both nginx and lightpd lack an admin gui. i need something quick n easy like Abyss offers. i'd give apache a try at home.
    – Mrchief
    Mar 1, 2010 at 18:53
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    Apache is widely used and widely supported, it's probably one of the easier ones to use (especially for light use) because of this.
    – Chris S
    Mar 1, 2010 at 19:32
  • @Mrchief: You don't need a GUI for Apache...there's one conf-file, and that's it.
    – Bobby
    Mar 2, 2010 at 12:33
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I'm surprised not to see Lighttpd.

http://www.lighttpd.net/

It isn't GUI based but it sure is light on resources and powerful.

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I've used XAMPP a number of times for development systems and/or small deployments. It's a good solution if you want a self-contained Apache/PHP/MySQL system. It will allow you to have multiple hosts as well since it uses Apache. And, if any of your personal stuff requires a database, it's part of the package, so nothing extra to hunt for.

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  • installer size is in mega bytes!! don't want something that fat.
    – Mrchief
    Mar 2, 2010 at 2:38
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    What's the big deal about the size of the installer? Downloading it by dial up?
    – Jon Rhoades
    Mar 2, 2010 at 3:21
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I saw that Cherokee was not listed yet, it is one amazingly fast and stable server, runs on Linux and Windows.

http://www.cherokee-project.com

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On Windows platforms, Baby Web Server could be a good alternative:

http://www.pablosoftwaresolutions.com/html/baby_web_server.html

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not open source, but free for a 'standard' version. http://litespeedtech.com/litespeed-web-server-editions.html very good, easy to setup and just works.

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HFS File server is a standalone file. Its awesome and totally free.

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It really depends on your OS, and whether you want to host static or dynamic pages. i ran xitami for years as my personal server mostly for static pages, but i ran a perl based forum too - no install required, single config file. Not tried multiple host and ports, but considering how simple it is to get up and running (download a zip file,unzip, config, fire it up) its worth a shot

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I personally would recommend Lighttpd. It runs with an extremely low overhead and short of a GUI-based config, has one of the neatest and easiest to understand configuration file(s).

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After using several of them, I think Abyss suits the best to my needs. This has many features out of the box is very light. Thanks everyone for their inputs.

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