I don't know if you would call me a beginner - I've been running Ubuntu as a desktop service for some years - but I come from a Windows background and so am heavily reliant on a GUI interface. I have difficulty, for instance, understanding the file structure in Linux, which makes any CLI manipulation very dodgy...
A long time ago I set up a web site supporting a hobby. Nothing fancy, mainly static pages and downloads. It gets anything from 0=100 page reads a day. It was set up on an XP machine using a simple and easy-to use free application - just download, run, fill in the URLs you want to service on the GUI and away it goes. It runs behind a Smoothwall hardware firewall, and provides for multiple vhost sites.
It is now well out of date, no longer supported, and doesn't support HTTPS. Still runs well, but I should really update to a more modern system. And since I don't want to buy any more Windows, that means running on Linux - ideally Ubuntu.
But I simply cannot find an equivalent open source free application which matches it. All Linux web servers seem to have similar admin to Apache - a bewildering array of configuration files and additional services which need to be installed in a way I can't understand. I recently tried to load Cherokee, which looked as if it had a GUI, and got:
.......
Ign:6 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/che...ver/ppa/ubuntu jammy InRelease
Err:7 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/alex-p/qcad/ubuntu jammy Release
404 Not Found [IP: 185.125.190.52 443]
Err:8 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/che...ver/ppa/ubuntu jammy Release
404 Not Found [IP: 185.125.190.52 443]
.......
E: The repository 'https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/alex-p/qcad/ubuntu jammy Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
........
Package cherokee is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'cherokee' has no installation candidate
E: U nable to locate package cherokee-admin
which, of course, I don't understand.
So I have three questions:
1 - does anyone know of a small, simple, gui-based web server that does https and vhosts?
2 - what have I been doing wrong when trying to install Cherokee?
3 - Is what I am trying to do impossible, and should I be trying to do something different?
If you have read this far, thanks. And even more thanks if you have any answers...