Russell McMahon wrote:

> Have just ventured into the new (for me) world of running a website 
> from own LAN.
> Trial page here (*very* slow uplink )(just a randomish collection of 
> pictures at present).
>
>        www.russell.servepics.com
>
> Server is the free and marvellous Apache 2 running on Windows XP home.

Yay Apache! 

>
> Requirement:
>
> 1.    I'm looking for recommendations for an FTP server to allow both 
> upload and download of web content, also running on Windows. Ideally 
> it would be the same price as Apache (ie free) but for-money products 
> OK if there's an excellent reason to use them. Ideally would run on 
> all flavours of Windows. Would consider using Linux in due course (of 
> course) but at present Windows is what's available and easy for me. 
> Aims are: works, easy to install and run, no surprises.

What?  Your OS of choice doesn't come with a good FTP server?  And you 
pay how much for it??  ;-)  (GRIN)

To be honest, I haven't done servers on Windows in so long I don't have 
much input on what to use for FTP...

However a couple of comments on the general "plan" below...

> 2.    Also possibly a POP3 email server, although that, as far as I 
> understand it, may need special external support and can not be a 
> totally free solution.

Go straight to IMAP, do not pass Go, do not futz around with POP3. 

For reasons why, I guess you could read this rambling blah blah blah 
weblog posting I did last night for some unknown reason on my website...
http://www.natetech.com/index.php?p=172

Server-side sorting, spam filtering, virus scanning, yadda yadda 
yadda... and all mail safely backed up and available on the server from 
anywhere at anytime with any standard mail client.  Having the mail 
pre-sorted before even opening up the mail client is a wonderful thing.  
I don't know how people live without it.  (And waiting on the client to 
do sorting which really should be a server-side job, and having to keep 
the rulesets synced between multiple clients on multiple OS's in my 
case, isn't going to happen.)

Plus something I didn't mention on the webpage... I also have 
SquirrelMail running on that server and set it up under Apache with SSL 
support and a self-signed certificate.  Thus, my own secure webmail 
system available world-wide from any browser on any machine... have had 
it since around the time Hotmail started up.  Great for anytime you find 
yourself at a computer and need to check e-mail.

Seriously -- it's nice to have mail services all handled on your own 
box.  Even if you go with POP3 you'll like having your own server if you 
deal with lots of mail.

> Getting Apache running was surprisingly painless (only a little blood 
> and sweat and no tears)(fighting the router/firewall was the greatest 
> hurdle).  If adding FTP access (and possibly email) is as easy I can 
> see the possibly of writing it up as an integrated procedure for others.

Apache is great software.  Super flexible but also always just 
outperforms just about anything out there. 

Apache/Tomcat and JSP's will do amazing things, as will Apache/PHP. 

If you haven't looked at it, you may want to see if Gallery will run 
under Windows/Apache/PHP if you're dealing with photos.  Very nice 
software.  http://gallery.menalto.com/  You'd need PHP installed to use it.

Let's see -- what else... FTP insecurity... yeah, that could be a 
problem for you if you are uploading anything sensitive or think anyone 
might be watching the upload in real-time or logging packets anywhere 
between you and the server... usernames and passwords in FTP are 
cleartext and viewable easily on the wire.  Someone mentioned SFTP, 
which is really just a sub-set of ssh and scp.  You can run a stock sshd 
on Windows using Cygwin for free, and it'll do all that... not as pretty 
or easy to set up as commercial $tuff... but available.

Speaking of security, if you use any software on the Apache server to 
handle the uploads of the pictures, or stuff like that, it'll be worth 
looking into what I mentioned above... SSL support for Apache.  mod_ssl 
works.  You can create a free self-signed certificate and if you access 
the site via https:// you'll get warnings from your browser, but at 
least you'll know that session is encrypted if you're doing remote 
administration work on the pictures, etc.

Ah... that's all I can think of right now... it's too big a topic, two 
bullet points doesn't cover it all!  ;-)

Nate
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