webservere

Webservere is a software system that accepts HTTP/HTTPS requests from clients (such as web browsers and mobile apps) and serves web resources, including HTML pages, images, scripts, and APIs. In practice, the term most often used is "web server." A webservere typically runs as a background service and listens on standard ports, commonly 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS.

Core functions include handling requests and returning responses with appropriate status codes. A webservere can serve static content directly and, for dynamic content, proxy requests to application servers. It offers features such as virtual hosting, TLS/SSL termination, and optional roles as a reverse proxy, load balancer, or content cache. It may also support URL rewriting, access control, and logging.

Common implementations include Apache HTTP Server, Nginx, Microsoft IIS, LiteSpeed, and Caddy. They vary in configuration style and ecosystem but share the same core responsibilities. Webserverse software is deployed on a variety of operating systems, with Linux-based environments being especially common in production.

Architecture and deployment commonly place a webservere within a web stack that may include an application server and a database. The webservere can serve static assets directly and forward dynamic requests to application backends via interfaces such as FastCGI, WSGI, or HTTP backends. It can perform TLS termination and act as a reverse proxy to shield backend services from direct exposure.

Performance and security considerations include enabling caching and compression (gzip or Brotli), supporting HTTP/2 and HTTP/3, and maintaining strong TLS configurations. Regular updates, certificate management (for example, Let's Encrypt), hardening, and comprehensive logging are standard practices. Administration is typically via text-based configuration files and modules/plugins that extend capabilities.