One of the features available in all previous versions of OS X is missing in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: personal Web Sharing. Formerly available as an option in the Sharing preference of System Preferences, Web Sharing allows users to run OS X’s built-in Apache Web server, effectively turning the Mac into a Web server. This feature is helpful for Web developers who want to test sites, and for small businesses and workgroups who want to share information locally via a Web browser. While the option no longer appears as a user setting, Mountain Lion still has the necessary underlying software, including Apache. Those with some facility with the Unix command-line can easily enable the Apache server, but there are even easier ways to bring the functionality back: see Adam Engst’s TidBITS article How to Bring Web Sharing Back to Mountain Lion for your Web Sharing resurrection options.

—Posted by Michael E. Cohen on July 30, 2012