What software do you recommend for an absolute beginner to the world of web servers? I have downloaded Apache and done a little with it but I would like something a little more user-friendly (if such a thing exists) also I would ideally like the software to be free as I am just playing about at the moment.

Also if anyone knows of any step-by-step guides that would be great!

I'm sorry to say that it's going to get more complicated.

The good news, though, is that it is well worth the effort.

Apache is still your best bet when it comes to web servers... especially if you're wanting to emulate something on your local machine that you'll later want to take online. For example, many popular web applications (Joomla, Drupal, MediaWiki, WordPress, and the list goes on) make use of Apache's mod_rewrite module to make search-engine-friendly URLs. You won't be able to emulate that on your local machine with another server.

You'll need to install (and configure) at least two other programs... MySQL (the database server, and PHP (the scripting language). Yes, it can be a trial... but knowing what's going on behind the scenes can be a real asset when things start behaving in ways that you don't expect.

XAMPP will install Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl for you... AND give you a nice menu-driven interface for all three that works from your system tray -- which can be a real convenience if you don't like opening up configuration files in Notepad every time you want to change something. But once again, that can come back and bite you, in those times when you really NEED to know the ins and outs of those configuration files.