Apple has killed OS X Server as far as web serving is concerned. I’m sure that many Enterprise users are going to be looking for a replacement for both 6 and X.
Fortunately I was already somewhat familiar with Abyss from Aprelium and can solidly vouch for its quality, longevity and very responsive tech support.
Abyss has a free version if you’re running a single site on a server or it’s $59 for a multi-site license with a year of updates included or $79 for two years of updates. A new OS X version (2.12) is being beta tested now to deal with Gatekeeper issues.
The one thing that’s not as well documented as it could be is cgi configuration as you’d use it for Panorama. So, here’s how to do it…
You can create a “cgi-bin” folder at the root level of every site and put panorama.cgi inside it, or as I prefer to do, create a single cgi-bin folder that can tae care of all sites on the server.
With the cgi-bin in the root folder, in the Scripting Parameters > Script Paths for each site, simply enter “/*cgi”.
To use a central location for multiple sites, each site has a setting for Aliases. The key is to use aliases to “share” the same physical location on the hard drive among several sites.
In Aliases, add a new alias defined as follows with any path adjustments needed to fit your configuration:
Virtual Path: /cgi-bin
Real Path: /Library/WebServer/cgi-bin
And, in the Scripting Parameters > Script Paths
/cgi-bin/*.cgi
Or even a more specific value like:
/cgi-bin/panorama.cgi
The asterisk allows for a wildcard in the name of the cgi script. I use it because, with all due respect to Panorama, I prefer to rename panorama.cgi to something to match each site. The reason is that it gives the impression of a custom cgi and hides what underlying cgi engine is in use. To me that’s a touch of security against hackers if they can’t even tell what’s in use. My cgi folder has several renamed copies of panorama.cgi and they all work just fine.
You can also name the cgi-bin folder just about anything as long as you adjust it accordingly in the paths. For instance, OS X Server actually had it as CGI-Executables and it can remain that way.