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Professional consultancy and software development is available through my company Castle Amber.

1 Security

1.1 Which web sites have information on Security?

1.2 Which books do you recommend?

Practical Unix & Internet Security 2nd edition
Simson Garfinkel and Gene Spafford
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. ISBN 1-56592-148-8
Excellent book! A must have.

From the same authors:

Web Security & Commerce risks, technologies, and strategies
Simson Garfinkel with Gene Spafford
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. ISBN 1-56592-269-7
More oriented towards WWW. A recommended supplement to the previous book.

2 Apache

2.1 Where can I find more information?

  • Apache - source, docmentation etc.
As far as I know there is just one book dedicated to this great webserver.
Apache the definitive guide - 2nd edition
Ben Laurie & Peter Laurie
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. ISBN 1-56592-528-9
includes CD-ROM

2.2 What is the format of the access_log?

Apache uses a plain text file to log each request. Each request adds a new line to the end of the log file. By default Apache uses a simple (common) log format: 
   %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b
with:
  • h - remote host
  • l - remote log name
  • u - remote user
  • t - time, in common log time format, e.g. [09/Jan/1999:12:58:30 +0100]
  • r - first line of request, e.g. "GET /john/images/askjohnsm.gif HTTP/1.0"
  • s - status, e.g. 200 (which means OK)
  • b - bytes send
If a value is not available a - is written to the log.

With the LogFormat directive you can easily change the default log format to the extended (NCSA's extended/combined) log format: 

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\""
This adds the referrer and the user agent, both enclosed within quotes, to each line. If you rent your web space and want the extended log format, kindly aks your webspace provider. Changing the format consist of just adding one line to the VirtualHost section in most cases.

For more information see the documentation of the LogFormat directive and custom log formats at the Apache web site.

3 Web Design

1.1 Which web sites have information on Web Design?

1.2 Which books do you recommend?

Web Design in a Nutshell a desktop quick reference
Jennifer Niederst
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. ISBN 1-56592-515-7
Nice book.
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