XAMPP
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| XAMPP | |
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| Developer: | Apache Friends |
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| OS: | Cross-platform (Linux, Windows, Solaris, Mac OS X) |
| Use: | WAMP |
| License: | GPL |
| Website: | http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html |
XAMPP is a free, cross-platform standalone server, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages. XAMPP's name is an acronym for X (any of four different operating systems), Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl.
The program is released under the GNU General Public License and acts as a free, easy-to-use web server capable of serving dynamic pages. Currently, XAMPP is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris and Mac OS X.
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[edit] Requirements and features
XAMPP only requires one zip, tar or exe file to be downloaded and run, and very little configuration of the various components that make up the web server is required. XAMPP is regularly updated to incorporate the latest releases of Apache/MySQL/PHP and Perl. It also comes with a number of other modules, including OpenSSL and phpMyAdmin. For its simplicity, it is sometimes called the "lazy man's WAMP/LAMP installation." Installing XAMPP requires only a small fraction of the time necessary to download and configure the separate programs.
The result is self-contained, multiple instances can exist on a computer, and a given instance can be copied from one computer to another.
[edit] Applications
Officially, XAMPP's designers only intended it for use as a development tool, to allow website designers and programmers to test their work on their own computers without any access to the Internet. In practice, however, XAMPP is sometimes used to actually serve web pages on the World Wide Web, and with some modifications it is generally secure enough to do so. A special tool is provided to easily password-protect the most important parts of the package.
[edit] Installing and testing a CMS
Many people use XAMPP to test their CMS systems before uploading them to the server that is otherwise going to host their website, this helps them in configuring the vital parts of the system and making sure everything is functioning correctly before the website goes online.
The Installation of a CMS is very easy once you have installed XAMPP, you simply must place all of the installation files inside the htdocs folder. When unpacking for example Joomla you would end up with the folders (in alphabetical order) administrator, cache, components, editor, help, images, includes, installation, language, mambots, media, modules and templates inside the htdocs folder. From there you would also have unpacked an index.html file, that would overwrite the old XAMPP index file, for a guided web installation when visiting localhost.
