Apache setup for LOCAL usage

Hello everybody,
I'm trying to setup Apache for local usage: the server will be used
just from localhost.
I thought it was a reasonable idea for developing a Perl application,
transforming it into CGI and using my net browser interface.

I have a couple of questions:

1) there is somewhere in the .conf files a way to restrict usage to
localhost?

2) The work of my app will be to search for determinate kinds of
documents on my disk, and returning them - as a link so that when
clicking it the relative app will be launched.
Can you suggest me how to access them? If I use the file:// syntax
e.g.
<a href="file:///0ale/doc/altro/MO-lab/descrizione.lyx">MOlab</a> ,
nothing happens. There are alternative ways?

thank you

alessandro