I recently played around with Apache and fond it incredibly educational.
I used Apache for multiple websites and sub-domains, and its a great web server. and I like Xampp’s user Interface, allowing me to edit, configure and Error check my site.
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Don’t get me wrong though, there are some downfalls when putting it through its paces using Owncloud I discovered that php supported was only allowing 2GB uploads, because it is 32Bit, I later discovered that Xampp is only 32Bit for Windows. This was a major disappointment for me, but I still found workarounds.
Apache is great and easy to use with Xampp, I recommend that anyone wanting to get into web servers and general Web hosting try it out first. I hosted it on my Windows Server, But using a server is completely unnecessary, I was also able to run it on my Laptop.
For a test Environment or to start out on Web Servers, I recommend Xampp. Its a trade up over usability and performance on Windows.