Most web applications and frameworks run with Lighttpd easily by using the FastCGI module. Some rewrite rules, and the right 404 handler will work wonders to keep a nice URL scheme.

Applications that contain their own web servers (such as trac or AjaxTerm) can be handled with mod_proxy, perhaps adding SSL and authentication in the process. In this case, we probably want to block direct access to the web application from outside by using a firewall.

Note that there is still a mod_cgi to talk to those legacy applications that will not talk FastCGI or SCGI, as well as mod_ssi if we have some server-side includes we want to move over from Apache. With version 1.5.0, this will be supplanted by mod_fastcgi, which in this version will automatically restart terminated CGI scripts.