Webserveren

Webserveren is the software that hosts websites and serves web pages to clients over the World Wide Web using the HTTP and HTTPS protocols. In practice, the term covers both the server program running on a computer and the machine that runs it. The webserveren handles incoming requests, determines the appropriate content or application response, and returns an HTTP response such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, or JSON data.

It typically listens on ports 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS. It can serve static content directly or forward dynamic requests to application servers or language modules through interfaces like CGI, FastCGI, or language-specific integrations (PHP, Python, Ruby). Modern webserveren supports features such as virtual hosting, TLS termination, compression, caching, and access control. It often operates behind reverse proxies or load balancers to distribute traffic and improve reliability.

Common implementations include Apache HTTP Server, Nginx, Microsoft IIS, lighttpd, and Caddy. They differ in architecture: Apache uses a process- or thread-based model with modular extensions; Nginx relies on an event-driven, asynchronous design for high concurrency; others offer alternative approaches. Many deployments combine a webserveren with an application server and a database, forming stacks such as LAMP or LEMP, sometimes with caching layers and content delivery networks.

Key considerations for webserveren include performance tuning, scalability, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 support, and TLS security. Administrators implement caching, load balancing, and security hardening, and keep software up to date. The webserveren has evolved from simple static file serving in the 1990s to feature-rich platforms that power modern, dynamic websites.