how to setup a webserver from my computer

[teabgs]

I want to setup a webserver on my computer so that I can easily have files for my thesis film accessible to the people working on it for me. I need to have it so that they can access the files when they're ready for them, and then when they have finished doing what they need to do put it back into a drop box.

I also need it accessible to both Mac and Windows.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I've never done anything like this before.

Thanks!

 

[lmalave]

You need to specify what computer and operating system you're running. I assume you're using a Mac, since you're posting in a Mac forum? Are you using OS X? If you're using OS X, then you already have a built-in webserver. Just go to "System Preferences" and go to the "Sharing" panel. From there, you can turn "Web Sharing" on. All this does is turn on a little web server that has as its document root your "Sites" folder in your home folder. As usual with Macs, things are so darn easy to do that it's easy to overlook the obvious.

In terms of being able to upload files, do a search and you should be able to find some free cgi scripts or something. I'm not sure what features are enabled in the built-in web server.

Maybe an easier option is to turn on FTP file sharing? Then any Windows PC can easily access your Mac. On a PC you can just type in ftp://your_machine_name_or_IP_address/ in the address bar of Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer, and your "Public" folder is fully accessible from Windows Explorer just like any other folder. It's pretty slick. But then of course you give up the ability to put a pretty interface on your site - everyone who accesses your site would just use some manner of FTP client (Windows Explorer just being one really easy-to-use one).

 

[Rower_CPU]

In order to allow people to place files back on your machine, the easiest thing would be to enable FTP access and create an FTP user with very limited access for them to get/put files.

 

[teabgs]

yeah, maybe FTP is the way to go..

I cant believe I didnt even think to look in the sharing preference

Doh!

 

[Doctor Q]

Your requirement sounds like a job for WebDAV ("Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning"). Here are some instructions I saw a while back for setting it up with the Apache web server that comes with Mac OS X, but I didn't try them myself and there may be better ways to do the setup. I know that Goliath is a WebDAV-based website manager for Macs.

Can somebody who's used WebDAV tell us all more about it?