Best lightweight web server (only static content) for Windows

Question

I got application server running in Windows – IIS6.0 with Zend Server to execute PHP. I am looking for lightweight static content only web server on this same machine which will relive IIS form handling static content and increase performance.

It need to be only static content web server – maximum small and maximum effective – lighttpd seems too big because allow to FastCGI.

I am looking for: Windows, static content only, fast, and lightweight.

I am using Windows Server 2003.

Answer 1

You can use Python as a quick way to host static content. On Windows, there are many options for running Python, I've personally used CygWin and ActivePython.

To use Python as a simple HTTP server just change your working directory to the folder with your static content and type python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000, everything in the directory will be available at http:/localhost:8000/

Python 3

To do this with Python, 3.4.1 (and probably other versions of Python 3), use the http.server module:

python -m http.server <PORT>
# or possibly:
python3 -m http.server <PORT>

# example:
python -m http.server 8080

On Windows:

py -m http.server <PORT>