Apache is free and open-source web server.
It powers most web sites on the internet.
The official Debian repository contains Apache and PHP:
apt install apache2 php libapache2-mod-php
When you own a domain (e.g. example.net), you can specify the zone of that domain.
For a web server, the following entries are relevant:
@ IN A 192.0.2.1 ; IPv4 address for example.net
@ IN AAAA 2001:db8:10::1 ; IPv6 address for example.net
www IN CNAME @ ; www.example.net is an alias for example.net
@ IN CAA 0 issue "letsencrypt.org"
The Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) defines the Certificate Authority (CA)
that is allowed to issue certificates for the domain.
A web server can serve many web sites.
Each web site is configured as virtual host on the server:
/etc/apache2/sites-available/example.net.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example.net
ServerAlias www.example.net
ServerAdmin webmaster@example.net
DocumentRoot /var/www/example.net
<Directory /var/www/example.net/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log vhost_combined
</VirtualHost>
When the configuration file of the site is available, the site needs to be enabled:
a2ensite example.net
Install certbot
to get a SSL/TLS certificate from Let's Encrypt:
apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache
Create and install the certificate (add all subdomains you might need):
certbot --apache -d example.net -d www.example.net -d mail.example.net
Most sites written in PHP (e.g. WordPress, phpMyAdmin, Matomo, ...)
require the following modules, which are part of php-defaults, to be installed:
apt install php-curl php-gd php-intl php-mbstring php-mysql php-xml php-zip
Additional modules provide better image quality for media uploads:
apt install php-imagick