(Guide) Complete Idiot's Guide to WAMP

Complete Idiot's Guide to WAMP

So, you got it in your head for some reason that you want to run a webserver on your Windows machine? With PHP, MySQL and all that fancy jazz? Well so did I, so I wrote this little guide after mucking about for two days, following various guides that didn't work, were incomplete, incorrect or outdated.

If you're like me, you have been using one of the preconfigured packages, like EasyPHP or XAMPP. The problem is, after using that for about a year, new versions of PHP, Apache and MySQL popped up left and right. And new versions of those handy packages don't come out overnight. Lucky for you, it's possible to download the components separately, mash it all together and have it come out a working WAMP server!

The following howto is a guide helping you on your way with setting up Apache 2.2, PHP 5 and MySQL 5.0 on a Windows XP machine. Windows 2000 or newer works as well, Windows 98/ME will NOT (stick with Apache 1.3 for those). I tried to make it as detailed as possible without including screenshots of each step in the install process and adding 'click Next on this screen'.

Get the software
First, you'll need to download everything so you can install everything in one big swoop.

Apache 2.2 - the actual webserver. Select a mirror, then click the link for Win32 Binary (MSI Installer).
PHP 5 - the scripting language that will be the middle man between Apache and the MySQL database. Click the link for PHP 5.2.0 zip package (the installer does not have all extensions).
MySQL 5 - the database software. Click on 'MySQL Community Server', then click 'Select a mirror' for Windows (x86) ZIP/Setup.EXE. Skip past the form and click one of the HTTP links for a mirror close to your location.
phpMyAdmin - a PHP 'program' that allows you to configure MySQL. You could use the commandline programs that come with MySQL, but this is way easier. Click the link for english.zip.