Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, you can do this by using a wildcard. Before using the wildcard, a complete hostname must be specified. It is necessary for 301 (redirect) errors.

VirtualHost {
    Hostname = www.website.net, *.website.net
    ...
}

Yes, use the following option for the VirtualHost section or in a .hiawatha configuration file inside that directory:

ShowIndex = yes

No. If you want to use a different startfile for a directory, use the StartFile option in a .hiawatha file in that directory.

Hiawatha has no support for on-the-fly GZip content encoding, because there is no need to. Most websites consists of static files like images and stylesheets and dynamic content generated by CGI. Images are hard to compress, so there is no need for GZip encoding there. Stylesheets are often small (a few kilobytes), so there isn't much to win by compressing them. Most Hiawatha users use PHP which has GZip output support, so that covers the important part of the dynamic content.

However, if a website does contain a large file that can be compressed, a jQuery javascript for example, you can use Hiawatha's special GZip content encoding support. Set the 'UseGZfile' option to 'yes' and gzip the file. Hiawatha will upload gzipped version of the file. Make sure the original file is still present, in case of a browser that doesn't support GZip content encoding.

Yes, that is possible since version 6.9. The Windows package of Hiawatha contains a Cygwin tool to run Hiawatha as a Windows service. Read the included Installation.txt for more instructions.