XAMPP is a software package that allows you to emulate a hosting provider’s environment. It is a all-in-one package consisting of Apache, MySQL, PHP and a few other goodies. XAMPP runs on all major Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems and has pretty much the same functionality across all platforms.

XAMPP Installation

To install XAMPP in Windows head over to the download section and grab the xampp-win32-version-installer.exe file. The installation is very straightforward. Prior to install just make sure your dont have any other conflicting programs using port 80 on your machine. (You most probably don’t.)

If you try to install XAMPP on a Vista machine you will see a warning popup. You can ignore it – I am running XAMPP on Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit and I have not seen any reduction of functionality.

install-warning

Proceed to install XAMPP and sit back and relax. The process takes about 5 minutes.

xampp-install-start

Once the install is completed you will see a XAMPP icon in the taskbar.

xampp-taskbar

Click the icon once to bring up the XAMPP Control Panel. From here you can easily go in to the settings of each individual component and stop or restart MySql, Apache and other services. Make sure that the services are running.

xampp-control-panel

XAMPP Configuration

To configure XAMPP to your liking launch your favorite web browser and point it to localhost or your own machine. XAMPP gives you access to tools like phpMyAdmin, Webalizer, PHP Switch, Mercury Mail and FileZilla FTP .

All the website files are located under the htdocs directory under the default installation path of XAMPP installer. In my case the program installed under C drive and website files are located under C:\xampp\htdocs\. If you install a local copy of WordPress or Joomla or Drupal or anything else then you can create several sites under their own sub-directory.