The Apache HTTP Server: How Webmasters Built the Web's Workhorse
In 1995 a group of webmasters began patching NCSA's web server. Apache became the world's most used web server. Read the history of its rise and what followed.
For a large part of the web's history, when you asked what software was serving a website, the answer was Apache. It is free, open-source and started as a community effort in 1995. It was the first major web server to be developed by a loose group of users who needed it to work better, rather than by a company selling a product.
The NCSA server and its patches
The first widely used web server after CERN's was NCSA httpd, written at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the same lab that produced the Mosaic browser. It was free, and many webmasters used it. When the main developer, Rob McCool, left the NCSA in 1994, development slowed, and webmasters who needed new features began to write their own patches and share them by email.
In early 1995 a group of these webmasters decided to coordinate. They formed a mailing list, collected the best patches and released an improved version of the server. The founding group included Brian Behlendorf, Rob Hartill, David Robinson, Cliff Skolnick and others. The project took the name Apache.
You may have heard that the name is a pun on "a patchy server". The project's own explanation is that the name was chosen to show respect for the Native American Apache nation. The pun is a popular joke, but it is not the official origin.
Apache 1.0 and the climb to the top
Apache 1.0 was released in December 1995. It was a rewrite of earlier code with a new modular design, so features could be added without changing the core. Its popularity grew steadily, and in April 1996 the web server survey run by the internet services company Netcraft showed Apache as the most used web server. It held first place in that survey for many years afterwards.
Several things explained this success:
- It cost nothing and ran on cheap hardware and on free Unix-like systems.
- It was modular. Modules added features such as URL rewriting, authentication, compression and support for scripting languages.
- It was open. Anyone could read the code, fix bugs and suggest changes.
- It was a fit for hosting companies. It could serve many sites from one machine using virtual hosts.
The Apache Software Foundation
As the project grew, it needed a legal home. The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) was incorporated in 1999 as a non-profit to provide legal protection for volunteers and to hold the project's assets. The ASF now hosts hundreds of other open-source projects, many of them unrelated to web serving. The Apache License used by the foundation allows commercial use and has been adopted by many other projects.
Apache 2.0 followed in 2002, with a redesigned architecture that supported different ways of handling connections. Later 2.x releases are still in use today.
Virtual hosts and the birth of shared hosting
One feature in particular shaped the hosting industry. Early HTTP did not tell the server which site name the visitor wanted, so each site needed its own IP address. HTTP/1.1 added the Host header, and Apache supported name-based virtual hosts, which let one server and one IP address serve many different websites. That made it far cheaper to host small sites, and it is the technical basis of shared hosting.
New competition
Apache's share of websites has declined as other servers have become popular. Nginx, written by Igor Sysoev and first released publicly in 2004, handles many connections efficiently with relatively little memory and is often used as a front-end or reverse proxy. LiteSpeed is another commercial alternative. Many hosting setups now combine servers, using one to handle static files and connections and another for application logic. Apache remains common, particularly on shared hosting, because of features such as .htaccess files that let site owners change settings without administrator access.
| Server | Known for |
|---|---|
| Apache | Flexibility, modules and per-directory .htaccess settings |
| Nginx | Efficient handling of many simultaneous connections |
| LiteSpeed | Apache-compatible commercial server focused on speed |
The open-source model that Apache proved
Apache is also remembered as proof that a volunteer community could produce software of professional quality. The project introduced a way of working, sometimes called the Apache Way, built on decisions made by consensus among contributors, merit-based membership and open discussion on public mailing lists. Companies that used Apache could contribute fixes without any single company controlling the project. Many later open-source projects adopted similar governance. For the hosting industry, it meant that the most important piece of server software was a shared resource, not a product that could be withdrawn or repriced by a vendor.
This is part of the reason that hosting prices fell so quickly in the late 1990s. A hosting company no longer needed to pay licence fees for its web server, and could pass the saving to customers.
What this means for your website
Apache's history is a reminder that the software under a website was built by communities of people solving practical problems. You do not have to configure any of this yourself: the web server is managed for you through Plesk on every Zebra Hosting plan. If you have an older site that relies on specific server settings, the team can check compatibility when it moves your site through the free migration service, and the VPS plans give you full control if you want to choose your own server software.
