Editing Web server (section)

=== Common features ===
Although web server programs differ in how they are implemented, most of them offer the following common features.

These are '''basic features''' that most web servers usually have.
* [[Static web page|Static content serving]]: to be able to serve static content (web files) to clients via HTTP protocol.
* [[HTTP]]: support for one or more versions of HTTP protocol in order to send versions of HTTP responses compatible with versions of client HTTP requests, e.g. HTTP/1.0, HTTP/1.1 (eventually also with [[Encryption|encrypted]] connections [[HTTPS]]), plus, if available, [[HTTP/2]], [[HTTP/3]].
* [[Logging (software)|Logging]]: usually web servers have also the capability of logging some information, about client requests and server responses, to [[Server log|log files]] for security and statistical purposes.

A few other more '''advanced''' and popular '''features''' (''only a very short selection'') are the following ones.
* [[Dynamic web page|Dynamic content serving]]: to be able to serve dynamic content (generated on the fly) to clients via HTTP protocol.
* [[Virtual hosting]]: to be able to serve many websites ([[domain name]]s) using only one [[IP address]].
* [[#URL authorization|Authorization]]: to be able to allow, to forbid or to authorize access to portions of website paths (web resources).
* [[#Content cache|Content cache]]: to be able to cache static and/or dynamic content in order to speed up server responses;
* [[Large file support]]: to be able to serve files whose size is greater than 2 GB on 32 bit [[Operating system|OS]].
* [[Bandwidth throttling]]: to limit the speed of content responses in order to not saturate the network and to be able to serve more clients;
* [[Rewrite engine]]: to map parts of [[clean URL]]s (found in client requests) to their real names.
* [[Custom error page]]s: support for customized HTTP error messages.