I hate this feeling of missing something…

So you wanna be a web designer/developer but needed an environment to test your projects. If you want you could buy a hosting package and start developing online or you can opt to do your development on your very own desktop.

Download XAMPP 1.7.1 from apache friends website. For first timers, I strongly recommend that you download the Installer (Basic Package).

XAMPP 1.7.1 installer packages includes Apache HTTPD 2.2.11, MySQL 5.1.33, PHP 5.2.9, Openssl 0.9.8i, phpMyAdmin 3.1.3.1, XAMPP Control Panel 2.5, XAMPP CLI Bundle 1.3, Webalizer 2.01-10, Mercury Mail Transport System v4.62, FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.31, SQLite 2.8.15, ADODB 5.06a, Zend Optimizer 3.3.0, eAccelerator 0.9.5.3, XAMPP Security, Ming. For Windows 2000, 2003, XP, VISTA. Read more.

Screenshots of the installation

Here’s the nifty bit. The folder for all WWW documents should be at C:\xampp\htdocs. Put a helloworld.html and you can view it by typing http://localhost/helloworld.html on your preferred browser. You have to run the Apache server in order to make this work.

You can create subfolders for your projects. For example, create the folder C:\xampp\htdocs\mywebsite and move your helloworld.html there. You should be able to view your page by typing http://localhost/mywebsite/helloworld.html.

For more information on installation and how to use it, please visit the Apache Friends website.

XAMPP is nominated for the Source Forge Community Choice Awards 2009!

Support XAMPP, Vote for XAMPP! If you enjoy using XAMPP, please spread the word and vote for us at the Source Forge Community Choice Awards.

Please vote for XAMPP particularly in the Best Tool or Utility for Developers category

Vote here.