If your system is running Unix, you can find its fully-qualified name by simply typing "hostnameat the shell prompt. The result should look something like this:

% hostname
www.foo.bar
If it only displays a partial name (like "www), you need to
find out the correct domain name and put the two together.
If you're running Windows NT, you can find out your fully-qualified system
name by going to the
Start-Settings-Control Panel menu choice and
double-clicking on the Network icon. Choose the Protocols
tab, select TCP/IP Protocol, and click the Properties...
button. Finally, choose the DNS tab. Your fully-qualified host
name is the Host Name put together with the
Domain value, separated by a dot.
Validating the Configuration Files
The last thing to do before starting up your new Apache installation
is to make sure it's configured properly. On a Unix system, you do
this with the following command:

/usr/local/web/apache/bin/apachectl configtest
Syntax OK

On Windows, you can do this by typing the following command in a
DOS window:

C:\Program Files\Apache Group\APACHEapache -t
c:/program files/apache group/apache/conf/httpd.conf: Syntax OK
If there's anything syntactically wrong with your configuration files,
you'll get an error message describing the problem. But from a vanilla
installation everything should be healthy.
Starting Apache

Once the Apache software is ready to go, the next step is to actually
activate it. The means of doing this differs depending upon your
platform and how you installed it; for instance, if you installed an
RPM package, there's a good chance that the installation automatically
started the server as well.
Starting Apache on Unix

Once you've done the make install, you're ready
to actually start the server running. You do this on Unix with
the following command:

% /usr/local/web/apache/bin/apachectl start
/usr/local/web/apache/bin/apachectl start: httpd started
Starting Apache on Windows

There are two ways to start Apache on the Windows platform. One is
to select the
Start-Programs-Apache Web Server-Start Apache
menu item, and the other is to do it in a DOS window:

C:\Program Files\Apache Group\APACHEapache -k start

Actually, as a third method you can go into the services control
panel and start the Apache servce, if you first select the
Start-Programs-Apache Web Server-Install Apache&nsbp;as a service
option first -- but I suggest that you leave that option for later, after
you're assured that your server is running properly.

Customising Your Content
The very most important thing you should do before you turn the
server on and let people start accessing it is: