SWEBS Web Server

Howdy,

I'm Paul Stovell, project manager for the SWEBS Web Server project at http://swebs.sourceforge.net

The SWEBS Web Server is designed to be an easy to use and configure general purpose web server. It is currently onlt beta, but we would be very grateful if people could download it and test it out.

Currently the SWEBS Web Server can do almost everything most web servers can do. Its one drawback, however, is that it cannot process CGI scripts. This is something we plan to do in the future through ISAPI/NSAPI support and fastCGI, but we need your help. I've searched for C++ documentation on writing both ISAPI and NSAPI servers (not client filters) but can't seem to find any.

But apart from CGI support, there isn't much at the moment the SWEBS Web Server can't do. I urge anyone interested in a developing project such as this to download, install and test the server. Your all welcome to register at the forums on our site and tell us what you think of the server, and make any suggestions/comments (all are welcome!).

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and thanks even more to anyone who follows the links/downloads the server.

~ Paul Stovell

Note: While advertising the SWEBS Web Server on a site thats mostly made for CGI development might be considered premature (as CGI is not supported yet), please know that our intentions at the moment are to get as many people as possible interested in the project so that when we get to these stages we have all the skills avaliable. And sorry for posting this thread here but it seemed the best place for it.

Hmm. This is great and all, but couldn't what you're attempting to do be done with some clever GUI scripting that wraps around apache and configures httpd.conf?

Seems to me it makes sense to learn a "real" production web server. You project could create tools to make learning/using apache easy, and as a "student" progresses they can drop-down into the real guts of apache and dig in. Best of all worlds: simplicity on the front end created by your team, all the flexibility and tweakability of apache on the back end. Folks could learn as little or as much as they needed, and all the time be learning real skills (and real configurations) they could apply to running apache servers when they outgrow SWEBS.

I mean, if it's just to make running a webserver easy, then what needs to be done to configure apache is pretty trivial.

And seriously, I'm not trying to demean the work you folks have put in, it sounds like an admirable project. But it seems like apache, one of the most successful, debugged open-source projects out there would be a good starting place. . . Spend your time making the learning tools/GUI management tools, but let the apache project handle all the guts.

Your absolutley right Hero, it would have been much easier for us to just create a GUI for apache. But wheres the fun in that?

The SWEBS was written as a tool for learning, not just for the end users, but for the developers as well. If we were getting paid for a project like this then yes, using Apache would have been a much better idea. But as the main server developer I have had a lot of fun in the project, and the ammount I've learned is staggering. Plus, shipping a GUI for something thats been around for years doesn't sit well with me, almost feels like cheating in a way.

Thanks for your comments Hero, and you had some very valid points. However a major reason the SWEBS Web Server was written in-house is because we have plans to work on other web software as well, creating a large package with everything people need to set up an inter/intra-net quickly.