I have recently been looking online for a guide on how to enable the different Apache modules there are out there. I couldn’t find a tutorial, surprisingly enough. When you find out how easy it is to enable the modules, you will be enjoying the real benefits of the Apache Web server.

By default, all modules are downloaded and included in the Apache installer. They can be found in the modules directory in main Apache install directory.

To enable any of these modules, open the “httpd.conf” file in the Apache root directory.

When the file opens, scroll down until you come to:

# Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) Support

In this section of the configuration file, you can decide on what modules you want to enable or disable. In any configuration (*.conf) file, the hash symbol (#) denotes a comment. As you can see in the httpd.conf file, some of the modules have hash symbols at the start of the lines. That means that those modules are disabled.

Here is an example:

#LoadModule logio_module modules/mod_logio.so
LoadModule log_config_module modules/mod_log_config.so
#LoadModule log_forensic_module modules/mod_log_forensic.so
LoadModule mime_module modules/mod_mime.so
LoadModule mime_magic_module modules/mod_mime_magic.so
LoadModule negotiation_module modules/mod_negotiation.so
#LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so

In this example, you can see that mod_logio, mod_log_forensic, and mod_proxy are disabled, as they have a hash symbol at the start of the lines. The other modules are enabled and should be working on your server.

If you do change any of these modules, be sure to save the file afterwards. Also, you will have to restart Apache before they will take effect.