Setting up a local server environment...

[Liam W]

Liam W submitted a new resource:

Setting up a local server environment... - How to (manually) setup a local test environment...

You may use XAMPP, WAMPP or another system, but one thing I noticed was that they run really slow.

I installed PHP, Apache & MySQL separately and they worked really fast. This tutorial will tell you how to do exactly that.

Downloads

You will have to download the following files:

Apache 2.2 Windows MSI
MySQL...

Read more about this resource...

 

[LPH]

Nice job.

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Is a capital D in Windows 8.1 (not sure on other versions)

C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

Also, I end up with save failed errors, please check if this file is opened in another program and cannot recall how to fix this issue. Maybe you could add that information

 

[Liam W]

Nice job.

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Is a capital D in Windows 8.1 (not sure on other versions)

C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

Also, I end up with save failed errors, please check if this file is opened in another program and cannot recall how to fix this issue. Maybe you could add that information

Which file, the hosts one? I never got that issue...

 

[LPH]

Which file, the hosts one? I never got that issue...

Yes. I have not used this yet to figure out why ... but it's a pain whenever it happens.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

 

[Liam W]

Yes. I have not used this yet to figure out why ... but it's a pain whenever it happens.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

You have a strange computer, I've never known that. Maybe you have malware that's locking it

 

[rdn]

You may try: http://winginx.com/

 

[LPH]

You have a strange computer, I've never known that. Maybe you have malware that's locking it

Nope, this is a very clean machine

 

[Matthew Hawley]

In my experience Xampp isn't very slow. :/

 

[Biker]

Nice job.

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Is a capital D in Windows 8.1 (not sure on other versions)

C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

Windows has never been concerned with case. Doesn't really matter if you type a d or D.

 

[LPH]

Windows has never been concerned with case. Doesn't really matter if you type a d or D.

Thank you. I did not know that.... Used to being careful due to linux

Update: Turns outs NTFS is case sensitive but Windows turns it off to emulate MS-DOS case insensitivity. Cool stuff.

 

[Biker]

Used to being careful due to linux

Yup. While noticing stuff like that is a good thing for Linux users, the underlying OS with Microsoft products have never been case sensitive. Even going back to the MS-DOS days, case was never an issue.

 

[Liam W]

In my experience Xampp isn't very slow. :/

It was very for me! Using this it's as fast as a local host should be

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I use Mac, so MAMP doesn't suffer these slow issues that Windows versions do... you get that true localhost experience via MAMP out of the box.

 

[Liam W]

I use Mac, so MAMP doesn't suffer these slow issues that Windows versions do... you get that true localhost experience via MAMP out of the box.

Unfortunately, not everyone can afford a Mac (I wouldn't mind one though!)

 

[Chris D]

LiamW, this is a very useful guide.

I experienced the same issues with XAMPP and WAMP. Was getting page loads of 1 second or more instead of the expected 0.1 or less when working locally.

My solution was to use Zend Server Free. I haven't tried Zend Server 6.1 yet, but I'm very surprised to see that it now includes nginx so the next time I do a complete restore, I will be trying it out.

But either way, any version of Zend Server worked perfectly for me.

Still, good guide. Thanks for sharing it.

 

[Sheratan]

Anybody using this setup for production site?

OR

Any reccomended WAMP pack or build for production site?

 

[Liam W]

Anybody using this setup for production site?

OR

Any reccomended WAMP pack or build for production site?

This setup is what you would get on a production site normally (although the root passwords would be changed).

 

[Ark Royal]

Thanks for the guide.
However, I cannot get 127.0.0.1 to display anything, I get a 404 page not found error.
I have followed the instructions and following a reboot I navigated to 127.0.0.1 and had the IIS splash screen displayed.
Disabled IIS, rebooted and now 127.0.0.1 gives the above error.

@Liam W Any ideas ?

Many Thanks
AR