Installing a Web Server on your Windows Based Computer

This is a guide which will show you how to install a web server package locally on a Windows based computer. This is the first step to running a local copy of WordPress on your local computer.

A web server package usually consists of a web server software, interpreter(s), database software etc. In this guide we’ll be installing XAMPP which mainly consists of Apache web server, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, FileZilla FTP server and more.

Installing everything manually is a complex and tedious task. Using a web server package like XAMPP makes this process a breeze. This guide shows you how to install version 1.7.3 of XAMPP but it’s use should be applicable to future versions of XAMPP also.

Download XAMPP

To start off, you can visit http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html to download XAMPP. Download the self extracting basic package of XAMPP for Windows. As of this writing the latest version of XAMPP is version 1.7.3.

Once you are done downloading the package, open it to start the installation process. Following is a screenshot of the first step of the installer that you’ll see.

The installer is asking you for the destination folder where you want to install XAMPP. You are free to choose any location you want. Examples of few locations you can install XAMPP are as follows:

• C:\
• C:\Program Files\
• D:\

In this guide I’ll assume you are installing XAMPP under C:\. Once you are done choosing a location to install XAMPP under, you can enter that under the ‘Destination folder:’ field and click on the Install button.

Clicking on the Install button should start the installation process where the installer will start copying the files into the destination you had chosen in Step 1. The following screenshot illustrates just that.

Once the installer is done with this step, you’ll see a command prompt asking you a question regarding adding shortcuts to the Windows Start Menu and Desktop. Here is a screenshot of that prompt.

It is recommended you select Yes by typing y and pressing enter. Valid options are y and n. If you don’t want to install the shortcuts, type n and press enter.

After you are done with that step, you might be prompted with the following step but most probably you’ll not. If you are prompted with it, please type y and press enter.

Once you are done with that, you’ll be prompted with the following question displayed in the screenshot.

You don’t need a portable XAMPP here so please type n and press enter.

Once you are done with all the prompts, XAMPP will finalize the installation process and show you a message that ‘XAMPP is ready to use’. If you see that message then you are almost done installing XAMPP web server on your computer!

The final prompt that you should see will look like as follows:

All you need to do there is type x, press enter and voila, you are done! Your web server is now ready to use! The only step that is required now and is optional is to configure the server to start automatically as a service. If you don’t want it to start automatically every time you boot into Windows, you don’t need to install it as a service. If you want to, follow the instructions provided in the next section.

Configuring XAMPP to start automatically

To configure XAMPP to start automatically every time Windows starts, click on the XAMPP Control Panel icon on the desktop. You can also find a shortcut to the XAMPP Control Panel in the Start Menu. The XAMPP Control Panel looks like this:

You’ll notice the checkbox labeled SVC next to Apache and MySQL is not selected. Check all services you want to start automatically. It’s recommended you enable Apache and MySQL. You can also choose to have FileZilla and Mercury start automatically if you want to. You’ll now need to restart Windows and the services you selected should start automatically.

Testing your installation

Now that you are done installing a web server, it’s time to test it.

You can access your local server by typing http://127.0.0.1/ or http://localhost/ into a browser.

If you installed XAMPP under C:\, your document folder will be C:\xampp\htdocs\. This is where you’ll store all your web related files and folders and this area can be accessed by using the URL mentioned above. Assume you have a file named hello.php located under C:\xampp\htdocs\, you can access it by typing http://127.0.0.1/hello.php

By doing that, your web server will process the hello.php file and display the results in your browser. Assume instead of C:\xampp\htdocs\., the hello.php is located under C:\xampp\htdocs\test\, you would then use the URL http://127.0.0.1/test/hello.php to execute it.

We will test our installation by creating a file named test.php using a plain text editor like Notepad. Launch Notepad or any other editor which lets you save files in plain text format and enter the following into it:

<?php

echo 'Hello World! This is just a test!';

?>

Save it as test.php under C:\xampp\htdocs\. Make sure your editor doesn’t save it as test.php.txt!

Once you are done doing that, you can open a browser and type in http://127.0.0.1/test.php to run the PHP script you just created.

If everything went well, you should see the following results in your browser:

If that is what you see then you are done installing and setting up a local web server which is now ready to use!

Hope this blog post was helpful to you, “Installing a Web Server on your Computer”

Spunky Jones.

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