wampserver - A free web hosting solution

Are you planning to launch a website? Creating a website online takes time. It is better to build your website locally and then move it to the live server, when it is ready. Do you need to update your website regularly? Don’t implement new features or experiment with your live server. It is always better to try it out in your local server and then roll out the same to your live server. And that's where wampserver is of great help to us.

If you are not technical enough to set up your Web server in your local machine, Wampserver is the ideal choice for you; specifically if you are using PHP. WampServer is a free web hosting solution for windows. When, you perform installation of wamp server, you will install Apache2, PHP and mySql database. Alongside, you will be able to make use of phpmyadmin.

Wampserver is a free software and can be downloaded from the site http://www.wampserver.com. After you download Wampserver, follow the step by step instruction to perform installion of wamp server in your local computer. Once installed, you can see few directories under your installed directory (generally C:wamp). The most important is the “www” directory. All your website files will reside under this folder.

 

Before starting your wampserver, consider the following

 

• By default, wampserver uses port 80. Check if there is any conflict on port 80 in your computer. If there is a conflict, you may want to change the default port of wampserver. For changing the port, open the httpd.conf under "<Installed directory>binapacheapache2.4.2conf". Change the default port 80 for the two lines a) Listen 80 b) ServerName localhost:80


• In case, you have firewall running in your computer, you need to configure your firewall to allow port 80 for your wamp server localhost (or the configured port) and default mySql port 3306.


• The www directory contains an index.php file. In case, you want to have your site directly under localhost, you need to replace the index.php with your own index.php. Otherwise, you may have to create sub-folders under www.

 

Once you complete your wamp server installation and set up everything, click on the newly installed wampserver icon from dektop or from ProgramàWampserverà Start wampserver. Hereafter you can see the wampserver icon near the clock on the righthand corner of your window. The icon will change its color from RedàYellowàGreen. The green color signifies that Wampserver started without any issue. Once the wampserver started properly, you will be able to see the wampserver menu near the clock again.

 

 

Now type http://localhost (in case you changed the default port, you need to append the port number i.e. http://localhost:<port no.>) in your browser and it will open up the default site for wampserver (unless you replaced the index.php). You will be able to see your projects under “Your Projects” subheading if you created subfolders under www.

 

 

Please let me know if you have any comments or queries on this.