Almost any tool that you want to use with Apache or Geoserver will accept a port number as part of the URL. So for something like openlayers, a simple WFS example is shown at [http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/wfs-filter.html][1]

If you look at the source of that, you'll see a part that looks like:

            protocol: new OpenLayers.Protocol.WFS({
                url:  "http://demo.opengeo.org/geoserver/wfs",
                featureType: "tasmania_roads",
                featureNS: "http://www.openplans.org/topp"
            }),

For you, that is going to be something like:

            protocol: new OpenLayers.Protocol.WFS({
                url:  "http://localhost:8080/geoserver/wfs",
                featureType: "tasmania_roads",
                featureNS: "http://www.openplans.org/topp"
            }),

(where the bit after localhost:8080 depends on how you set up your geoserver)

With that information, you should be able to avoid setting up a reverse proxy on Apache. [1]: http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/wfs-filter.html

Almost any tool that you want to use with Apache or Geoserver will accept a port number as part of the URL. So for something like openlayers, a simple WFS example is shown at http://openlayers.org/dev/examples/wfs-filter.html

If you look at the source of that, you'll see a part that looks like:

            protocol: new OpenLayers.Protocol.WFS({
                url:  "http://demo.opengeo.org/geoserver/wfs",
                featureType: "tasmania_roads",
                featureNS: "http://www.openplans.org/topp"
            }),

For you, that is going to be something like:

            protocol: new OpenLayers.Protocol.WFS({
                url:  "http://localhost:8080/geoserver/wfs",
                featureType: "tasmania_roads",
                featureNS: "http://www.openplans.org/topp"
            }),

(where the bit after localhost:8080 depends on how you set up your geoserver, but should be fine if http://localhost:8080/geoserver brings up the admin console, as shown in http://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/user/installation/windows/installer.html)

With that information, you should be able to avoid setting up a reverse proxy on Apache.