Can I run two web servers on the same computer?

Question

I just found out that I can write a really simple web server using Python. I have already an Apache web server I would like to try the Python based web server on this machi

Answer 1

If you actually want to run separate servers to test out server software see the other answers, but...

It sounds like (because you are a developer, not a sysadmin right?) you really just want to run Python and PHP sites on the same computer. So, forgive me if I'm reading into your question, but this setup allows me to run both kinds of sites on the same computer with the same port (port 80) in one server, Apache.

I make new entries in my /etc/hosts file (or C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows) and point them to 127.0.0.1:

127.0.0.1      localhost

# development projects
127.0.0.1      somephpsite.com.local
127.0.0.1      www.somephpsite.com.local
127.0.0.1      otherpythonsite.com.local
127.0.0.1      www.otherpythonsite.com.local

Then in Apache I add VirtualHosts for each site:

    DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
    ServerName localhost



    
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    
    DocumentRoot "/Users/Robert/Projects/SomeSite/somephpsite.com"
    ServerName somephpsite.com.local
    ServerAlias www.somephpsite.com.local
    ErrorLog "/Users/Robert/Projects/SomeSite/error.log"
    CustomLog "/Users/Robert/Projects/SomeSite/access.log" common



    
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    
    DocumentRoot "/Users/Robert/Projects/OtherSite/otherpythonsite.com/static"
    Alias /(.*(\.css|\.gif|\.ico|\.jpg|\.js|\.pdf|\.txt)) /Users/Robert/Projects/OtherSite/otherpythonsite.com/static/$1
    WSGIScriptAlias / /Users/Robert/Projects/OtherSite/otherpythonsite.com/wsgi.py
    ServerName otherpythonsite.com.local
    ServerAlias www.otherpythonsite.com.local
    ErrorLog "/Users/Robert/Projects/OtherSite/error.log"
    CustomLog "/Users/Robert/Projects/OtherSite/access.log" common

So, the PHP sites run in the DocumentRoot like they always do. And the Python sites run in WSGI. And they both run in Apache. Then to test, I just add ".local" in whatever browser I'm using to work on my local copy.