Apache Server Tutorial Part I: Preparing to Install WAMP on Windows NT 2000 Pro
Definition WAMP is an acronym for the combination Microsoft Windows, Apache, MySQL and one or more of Perl, PHP and Python. It is modelled after the more well-known LAMP, referring to the all-open source/free software approach which uses Linux instead of Windows.
I’ve used EasyPHP for ages to develop sites locally but have outgrown it and decided to install everything on it’s own and run it as a service.
Because I sometimes have periods of “airheadedness” and screw things up or have hard drive failures I often document major things so that I can locate them and reconfigure later. That’s the case here… only I’m opening it up to others as well, in hopes that we’ll all get some use out of it and build a help guide that even the newest newbie can follow easily.
This is going to be the step-by-step documentation to install and configure the Apache HTTP webserver on a Windows NT 2000 Pro system. If you’re installing on a different system and see any significant differences, please post them.
The plan is for us to configure Apache with PHP, phpMyAdmin, MySQL and whatever else hits our fancy ;o) We’re probably going to hit some stumps … and hopefully, we’ll be able to get ideas from one another when that happens. I’m really looking forward to community input here. Let’s make this an easy guide for future enthusiasts looking to develop locally.
This first post is just “Getting Prepared”. It’s important we read about the different systems we will be using and that we’re familiar with the security issues and methods to secure our systems. I’m not going to get into all that here … because each system is unique. Read the documentation below and implement what is needed, make your decisions and meet me in the next post ;o)
Before we go any further, I recommend you get a good text editor that will work well with some of the files we will be editing in the next sections. Notepad doesn’t count ;o) Some of the files we will be working with are over 1000 lines, so we need a good text editor that has line numbers, can do “search and replace”, “syntax highlighting” and can even bookmark sections for your easy retrieval later. Personally, I use EmEditor and got the pro version with an educational license. However, I know not everyone can get the pro version … and the trial version is only for 30 days. So, take a look at some of the free text editors that we recommend on our Text editors for developers page and download the one you feel will be most comfortable with.
You might also want to get a “file comparison” program that will highlight the differences in your files. We recommend WinMerge which is available from the SourceForge Project Page
Now .. a little more preparation .. before we go to the next article in this tutorial: Download Packages for Apache Server on Windows 2000
Required Reading:
PHP Installation on Windows Systems
Installing MySQL On Windows Systems
Using Apache with MicroSoft Windows
The above tutorial is taken from newbiehangout.com is licensed under Creative Commons License