Okay, please excuse my noobyness. I'm not a webserver admin, I just happen to be using Apache to host a fairly complex website designed by a friend. So as I said, I am running apache on a website. I am running it through XAMPP 1.7.1 for the support of php_mssql.dll since the website does do a fair amount of work with a database and it is programmed for mssql.dll I was having problems with getting port 80 to stay open so I do have my httpd.conf set with both Listen 80 and Listen 8080 so people can see the website and I can see it from within my lan, I do plan on switching it back to Listen 80 when I am able to move this website to a VPS. So, whenever I make a change to the database the change is shown on the website immediately, however when ever I make a change inside the htdocs folder it seems to go unnoticed. Example, I change some HTML text and it won't change at all. Something like from <a href>LINK NAME</a> to <a href>This is a radical name change to see if it is working</a> and it is still showing LINK NAME. Also I made a 'downloads' folder so some people can download from the web server but when ever I navigate to http://website.com/downloads I get a 404. I have attempted to restart the system multiple times and have restarted the Apache service a few times as well and I am totally stumped. Maybe I messed up a setting inadvertently? Sorry if this post sucks. I'm new to this Apache stuff.
Well, yes, this post sucks. You have statements that make little sense and the only question is "maybe I messed up a setting?" Focus on one issue, ask a specific question, and perhaps someone can begin to sort through this and help with whatever problem you're having.
Well I can help but feel these problems are all caused by the same thing, what that is I don't know. The bits and pieces of information is just what I have gathered, I do not know what would or would not be helpful so I just provided everything I could, like I said, I'm new to this stuff. I guess the more direct question is what is causing the server to return 404 errors for a directory that does exist, and is it the same thing that is causing my code changes from not being ran?
OK, lets start with the download directory. But first ... What type of computer is the XAMP package installed on? Home PC? What OS? Or is it on a VPS? If so, what flavor of Linux? As to the download directory, is there an index file in the directory? (index.html, index.php, etc?) How did you create the directory? What is the ownership and what are the permissions for the directory?
The XAMPP package is on my home computer that I am working on until I transfer it over to a dedicated server. It is running on a Windows Server 2003 SP2 32bit OS. Download directory has no index files in it. The only file in it is a .rar file which we are attempting to download. I created the directory simply by just creating a new folder titled 'downloads' within the htdocs folder. I did not modify any permissions or ownership settings so I will assume they are default.
Just thinking ahead: there are a couple of looming potholes. You have setup a Linux environment (LAMP) with MSSQL on your test server. LAMP is by definition a Linux environment and MSSQL is a Windows application. By mixing technologies you are creating quite a bit of work for yourself when you do migrate to a dedicated server. That is, running MSSQL on Linux is possible but few, if any, Linux dedicated server providers will have MSSQL provisioned for you in any standard offerings. If, on the other hand, you go with a Windows server, PHP is going to be an issue. This one is a bit easier to fix. To prevent a 404 error while browsing to http://mydomain/downloads/ you must have an index file. index.html is the most common flavor. You can simply create an empty index.html which will "display" a blank page or you can put something in the file to display a message to visitors. Without the index file, it is working exactly as it is supposed to. You should be able to point your browser to http://mydomain/downloads/myfile.rar without an error. (Chances are, it will begin downloading ...) So if that resolves the 404 problem you can move on to the next issue if you want to provide a detailed description of what you are doing and what you are seeing.
Okay, so I tried putting an index.html AND an index.php inside the download folder at the same time. No go, so I tried both index.html separately and index.php separately. Still no go with either.
The next thing to try is permissions and ownership. I'm afraid you're on your own fixing permissions. XAMPP requires a Windows ACL tool to fix permissions and ownership issues. Since I don't use Windows or XAMPP I can't give you any more help with that. XAMPP and WAMP are fine for developing website if you understand how they work but, personally, I think you are better off developing in the same environment the website will be on when it goes live. So you might consider a cheap shared Linux host and give it a go there.