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Setting Up A Complete WAMP Server
Posted: Saturday 27th January 2007
Looking to setup a WAMP server but don’t know where to start? Well you have come to the right place. First of all there are many ways that are available to help you setup such a server. For the majority of newbies, the idea of having to sit down and manually configure everything can prove to be a pain in the backside. The following tutorial will guide you thru the steps necessary for you to transform your Windows PC into a fully configured WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP) development server.
The best tool I have found to do this so far is XAMPP which you will need to download from http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html. Once you have downloaded the installer file for Windows and locate it on your hard drive (it should be xampp-win32-1.5.5-installer.exe).
Double-click on the file to start the installation process.
Select the default language you wish to use for your XAMPP installation.
Once you have selected the language, you will be greeted with XAMPP install interface. Click on the Next button to proceed to the next dialog.
Decide where you want to install XAMPP on your system. If you wish, you can leave the default location where it is and click on the Next button to continue.
Assuming you have IIS and another FTP server software installed, make sure that Install Apache as service and Install FileZilla as service are checked. If you have IIS running and you want Apache to be your development server, you will need to stop IIS from running so as to free up Port 80. Click on Install to start the installation procedure.
The installer will proceed with installing all the necessary files that you need for your development server.
The installation will then proceed to check for any open ports. If you have IIS running, Apache will to install as a service on your computer. So make sure the necessary ports are available.
Once installation is complete, click on the Finish button to close the dialog box. The XAMPP Control Panel will the pop up displaying the services that are currently running.
Now, fire up your favourite browser and in the address bar, enter http://localhost
Select your default language here again to continue.
Job done, we now have XAMPP installed. Click on STATUS in the left column to confirm what’s running and what’s not.
Now that we know what running, don’t assume everything done and taken care of. Security is an important issue here especially if your PC has access to the internet. You certainly do not want anyone accessing your PC whenever they want. Click on SECURITY so as to load up your server security status.
Quite worrying isn’t it? Anyone that knows your IP address can easily breach your server and change details in such a what that prevents your accessing it yourself and delete any websites you may have created. But not to worry, we will rectify this. Let’s take care of the XAMPP directory and the MySQL Server first. Click on http://localhost/security/xamppsecurity.php link. You will be redirected to a new page that will allow you to setup a password for MySQL as well as setup a username and password for your XAMPP directory.
Start off by the entering a password for the root MySQL user. Make sure the passwords match and leave the PhpMyAdmin authentication system set to cookie. DO NOT SAVE THE PASSWORD AS A PLAIN TEXT FILE! Click on the Password changing button to set the password for the root MySQL user. You will be brought back to the same page again to enter a username and password for the XAMPP directory. Enter a name for the user and enter a password. Once you have done this, click on the Make safe the XAMPP directory button to proceed.
Now click on SECURITY in the left column again. This time, you will be greeted with a dialog box that asks you for your username and password in order to be granted access into your server.
The Security Status page will load up again and you can see that the XAMPP directory and MySQL have been secured.
Now it’s time to secure the FTP Server and the Mercury Mail Server. Fire up the XAMPP control panel if you don’t have it open by locating the icon on your desktop or by navigating to Start Menu > Programs > Apache Friends > XAMPP Control Panel.
Once you have the XAMPP control panel up, locale the FileZilla service and next to the Stop button, click on Admin to bring up the FileZilla interface.
If you check the Security Status page, the only reason why FileZilla fails the security is because the password is set ‘wampp’. What I propose to do here to add the extra bit of security will be to delete the current users in the users list and create a unique one.
As the above image shows, the current users are newuser and anonymous. Delete these two by clicking on the Remove button. Click on the Add button on add a new user. Make sure the account is enabled and enter a password for this user’s account. If you are going to have exclusive access to your server, feel free to bypass the user limit of the server. You can also enter a description for your server as well if you wish to do so.
We now need to select a folder to share on the server. On the left-hand side of the users dialog box, under Page, select Shared folders.
Under the Shared folders list, click on the Add button. This will bring up a dialog box that allows you select which folder you wish to share. Select your folder and click on Ok to close the dialog box. Once again, if you are going to be the only one accessing this server, feel free to set as many access rights as you want for the folder. Click on OK to close the dialog box and save your new settings. At this point, we can refresh the Security Status to reflect the changes on our server.
The FileZilla FTP server is now secured. The last thing we will now do is secure the Mercury Mail Server.
Start up the XAMPP Control Panel again. By default, the Mercury Mail Server is not automatically started. Click on the Start button to start it.
Once the Start button changes to Stop, click on the Admin button to bring up the Mercury Mail Server interface.
What we will do here is delete the default user and create a new one. Click on the Configuration menu and select Manage Local users.
This then brings up a list of users assigned to the system. Proceed by the deleting newuser. Click on the Add button to create a new user.
Enter a username, a personal name and a password and click on OK to confirm the settings.
There a new user I setup. You can close the Mercury Mail Server once you are done. Once again, refresh the Security Status page. This should now show that all your servers are secure.
Now when we check the XAMPP Status page, all systems are up and running.
The XAMPP Control Panel should also reflect this.
Just remember that every time you start up your computer, the Mercury Mail Server is not set up as a service. So in order to start this up, you need to open the Control Panel and the Mercury Mail Server manually. Personally, I don’t use the Mercury Mail Server. I use hMailServer (http://www.hmailserver.com).
OK, we have set up XAMPP and secured the servers, but how do I test the Mail Server. This is a simple tutorial on how to setup up your favourite mail client to work with the Mercury Mail Server. Remember, all I have change on the mail server is the username and password. For this tutorial, I am using Mozilla Thunderbird Beta 2.
Fire up Mozilla Thunderbird. Select File > New > Account. This will bring you the New Account Setup Wizard. As we are setting up a new e-mail account, click on the Next button.
Enter the new username you created for the mail server and the email address which should be [username]@localhost. Click on the Next button to continue.
Make sure to set the server type to POP3 and both Incoming and Outgoing servers as localhost and click on Next to continue.
Next enter the Incoming User Name and click on Next to continue.
Enter the account name and click on Next to continue.
Once you have entered all these details, a dialog box will appear summarizing all the information you have entered to ensure they are correct. If you feel everything has been entered properly, click on the Finish button to close the wizard and to download messages.
Feel free to send yourself an email to make sure that the server is working properly. And that’s it. Hope you all enjoying this tutorial.
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