Ranting Kenya

Installing a server on your local machine

First, I’d like to apologize to the Linux and Mac users, this post will be scewed towards Windows users. I will try to offer the alternatives, but I haven’t actually implemented them myself.

So with that out of the way, what you need to download is WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP). This is truly the simplest way to get a server on your windows machine up and running. You don’t even have to mess around configuring the php.ini file or anything like that. Just double click this installer and you’re ready to go.

Afterwards you’ll see a small icon on your taskbar. You’re basically up and running. If you click on it, you’ll get a small menu. Clicking “www Directory” will take you to the directory you should be putting your new site files. To create a new project, and have an area to store everything, just create a new folder in this “www” directory. Name it “blog”, and that’s where your index.php and other files will reside.

If you click on the wamp server in the taskbar and then choose “Localhost”, it will open your default browser and send you to a page summarizing and providing links that you’ll be using frequently. You’ll also see “blog” under the “your projects” section.

By the way, if you’re looking for a really good text editor that works with a multitude of files, search for Notepad++. It’s my personal favorite.