This is a how-to to on installing and setting up lighttpd and PHP on Maverick. Lighttpd or "lighty" is a webserver with a very low use of resources.
Install the packages we need: (this may not be all, but these two will automatically download the rest as dependencies)
sudo apt-get install lighttpd php5-cgi
Enable the fastcgi module and the php configuration with
sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi sudo lighty-enable-mod fastcgi-php
Reload the lighttpd daemon
sudo service lighttpd force-reload
To test if it's working create the file /var/www/index.php with the following contents:
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
and check out http://localhost/index.php in your browser.