Apache server is the popular web server software. Apache software foundation has founded and developed the apache software foundation. Being an open-source web server, Apache had gained its popularity rapidly. The software is available for free and is used by about 67% of web servers worldwide.
On top of all, Apache had been used by most of the WordPress hosting providers, even though they had numerous other web server options. Most of the big firms, including Cisco, IBM, Adobe, Xerox, LinkedIn, Facebook, AT&T, eBay, and others, are using the Apache webserver.
Why is the Apache server preferred most?
Apache web server is one of the former web servers, and it is founded in the year 1995. Similar to the other web servers, it has its perfect backbone role in serving the files to the visitors of your website.
The server is highly efficient, fast, and secure. It could adapt to any environment with its extensions and modules. Apache server has been used by various cPanel hosts too.
From handling the communication of your website to cleaning the memory, caches, and modules, Apache has several functions. The software web server is easy for beginners due to its regular updating feature.
How does Apache server work?
It is a complicated question to describe how the server works. However, the primary responsibility of the Apache server is to acknowledge the request from the clients and also reply them back with the response. In short, its primary usage is to maintain a connection between a server and website browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and others.
As it is a cross-platform web server, Apache is supported by both UNIX and Windows servers. This web server also responsible for handling Multi-processing modes (MPM) or mod_ssl to enable SSL v3 and supports TLS.
Some of the features in Apache are:
- .htaccess
- IPv6
- FTP
- HTTP/2
- Perl, Lua and PHP
- Bandwidth throttling
- WebDAV
- Load Balancing
- Rewrite URL link
- Track sessions
- Use IP address on Geolocation
Apache Vs. Nginx:
NGINX is another webserver application founded in 2004. Despite the popularity of Apache, when you search properly, you can find that NGINX is increasing in the usage than Apache. If a website has encountered over traffic, it may cause performance issues while using Apache, but it won’t be affected in case of NGINX.
Apache’s role in most trafficking site as:
- 27.1% of the 100000 popular sites
- 21.5% of the 10000 popular sites
- 16.2% of the 1000 popular sites
While the NGINX role in most trafficking site is:
- 56.1% of the 100000 popular sites
- 63.2% of the 10,000 popular sites
- 57% of the 1000 popular sites
Here, you can predict the lower performance of Apache when compared with the other web server, NGINX.
How to find what web server you are currently using?
Now, if you want to check the webserver you are using among Apache and NGINX, you should often look into the website’s HTTP header. The steps include in this process are,
- Click on the Network tab in Chrome developer tools.
- You can use either Pingdom or GTmetrix.
However, some services like Cloudflare may not support this process.
Apache would help to run the hassle-free website service. It is the perfect choice for everyone from small business to more massive entrepreneurs who need to build their website. Moreover, this server works with numerous management systems, web frameworks, and programming languages. Hence, we can’t deny that Apache is the best web server for all types of web hosting platforms.