Deploy a Local Web Server on Windows
In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to quickly deploy a local WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) server in a few minutes using XAMPP. Using a local webserver, you can install PHP web applications on your local computer (such as a personal wiki, chat, forum, etc).
For this tutorial, we’ll be showing you how to setup XAMPP using the self extracting 7-Zip file.
Downloading XAMPP
Head over to this page to download XAMPP, and pick the EXE (7-zip) as it’s the smallest package size. Save it to your main drive (usually C:\).
Setting up XAMPP
Double click the archive, and just accept the default location. It’ll automatically create a folder called xampp.
Head into the newly created xampp folder and double click on setup_xampp.bat, where an install script will configure XAMPP. It’ll prompt you to press a key once you’re done.
Double click on xampp_control.exe, where a control panel will launch. For basic functionality, you’ll need to start Apache, and for most needs, you’ll need to launch MySQL. Closing the window will minimize it to the system tray.
That’s it! To access your new webserver, head to http://localhost/ to see the default XAMPP pages. To place pages on your website, place your HTML files in the htdocs folder.
I'm Jason, the main author of Third Error, and many of the topics I'll focus on concern Windows (and applicable software), web applications, web design, and a bit of *nix (Ubuntu mainly). My computer runs Windows XP, with virtualized Ubuntu and OS X handy.