Resources

PHP

PHP is a powerful scripting language, as you can well imagine. It works on Unix and Win32 Web servers and provides massive connectivity features. It's also very well documented.

Online manuals: http://www.php.net/docs.php

Several books are also out there on PHP, including Web applications:

· Development with PHP 4.0 , by Tobias Ratschiller and Till Gerken

· Professional PHP Programming , by Jesus Castagnetto, Harish Rawat, Sascha Schumann, Chris Scollo, and Deepak Veliath

Apache

Apache is also, as you can see, a powerful Web server that supports a multitude of options. It can also work on Win32 in addition to Unix-based systems.

Online manuals: http://httpd.apache.org/

Several books are also available on Apache:

· Apache: The Definitive Guide , by Ben Laurie and Peter Laurie

· Administering Apache , by Mark A. Arnold, Jeff Ameida, Clint LeMon Miller III, James D. Sheetz, and Gwen R. Rhine

SSL

Understanding SSL may be useful, either for debugging your SSL server or for working up a larger project. The mod_ssl documentation is a good place to start, as is Netscape's site on SSL:

· Online manuals: http://www.modssl.org/docs/

· Netscape's SSL 3.0 specification: http://home.netscape.com/eng/ssl3/

Sendmail

Most Web-mail packages use the Sendmail SMTP daemon for delivery. In fact, to get mail delivered to your machine you will have to set up sendmail. Most Linux distributions ship with it already configured. Still, you may want to change some configuration items.

Homepage and documentation: http://www.sendmail.org

Several books are available on Sendmail, varying in complexity.

· Sendmail for Linux , by Richard Blun, et al.

· Sendmail , 2nd ed., by Bryan Costales and Eric Allman