Install Apache Web Server Under Linux

I'm not going to cover compiling Apache since it's actually a fairly painless process and pretty well documented. Given that, let's move on to actual installation...
Personally, I like to group all the web server files together in a centralized location. If you are installing this manually, then this is something you can do from the outset, and I highly suggest doing this since it will reduce administration headaches.
If you had Apache installed automatically as part of the Red Hat installation procedure, then things will NOT be centralized! In fact, I thought the file placement scheme was one of the most confusing I've ever encountered. Here's what the Red Hat installation does:

web server binaries	/usr/sbin/httpd /usr/sbin/httpd_monitor
config files	/etc/httpd/conf/*
log files	/etc/httpd/logs/*
web server root (contains cgi, icons/images, and html files)	/home/httpd/*

I found this to be really disorganized, so I ended up putting mostly everything under one directory (I left the binaries in /usr/sbin):

    mkdir /httpd
    mv /etc/httpd/conf /etc/httpd/logs /home/httpd/* /httpd
    rmdir /home/httpd

You should end up with:

    /httpd/
          /cgi-bin
          /cgi-src
          /conf
          /html
          /icons
          /logs

And then to preserve the original Redhat file locations:

    ln -s /httpd /home/httpd
    ln -s /httpd/conf /etc/httpd/conf
    ln -s /httpd/logs /etc/httpd/logs

Finally, I added this link since I felt that it made more sense:

    ln -s /httpd/logs /var/log/httpd

If you are installing and compiling Apache manually, you may want to have the original source files also located under /httpd (or whichever directory you have).