Quick Debian tip for Testing Static HTML Sites

For trivial stuff directing your browser to file:///path/to/your/page.html does the trick. However if you need to test your page on a real webserver, setting one up can be a hassle. More than that, I dislike leaving crubmles of config files on my dev machine.

Here is my quick and not dirty solution; userdir plugin for apache. Basically I enable userdir and then place a symlink to my static content from it. Here’s the list of commands you need to run:

# Install Apache if it's not already installed
sudo aptitude install apache2
# Enable userdir
sudo a2enmod userdir
sudo service apache2 restart
# Create a symlink to your static site
cd $HOME
mkdir public_html
cd public_html
ln -s /path/to/your/static/site link_name
x-www-browser localhost/~username/link_name/index.html

This way you can host and un-host many static sites locally. I hope it helps.