33 Responses to “Local Development: Installing XAMPP”

1. Lucy on February 18th, 2008 22:25

   Thanks - worked a treat. Now on to the WordPress local install …

2. shane on February 18th, 2008 22:38

   Lucy,

   I’m glad it worked. The WordPress local install should work pretty smoothly, too. However, if you want tips on editing themes, you’re on your own :)

3. cooper on February 23rd, 2008 5:10

   I had this installed on xp and it was great, but still fail to get it to work on Vista no matter where it is installed. Bummer really I did play with all my blog themes that way.

4. shane on February 23rd, 2008 19:44

   Cooper,

   What exactly is it that doesn’t work? I’ve installed this at least 5 times on Vista and had no troubles at all. If you’ve got any details, I’d love to try and help you troubleshoot it. As you say, it’s an excellent way to play with blog themes without breaking anything important.

5. Donatus on February 23rd, 2008 21:03

   About the error “Ports 80 already in use… Installing failed”: before installing close all firewalls, and instant messaging programs. This is suggested in another tutorial I found: http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/how-to-set-up-a-personal-home-web-server-124212.php
   I gues that would help someone.

6. shane on February 23rd, 2008 21:11

   Donatus,

   You’re probably right and that should have occurred to me sooner. It’s interesting to note that everything worked anyway, despite the fact that Apache “failed”.

   When playing around with servers and the like, it’s always a good idea to turn off firewalls before installation. I just don’t remember if I followed my own advice at the time or not.

7. Morgan on March 2nd, 2008 11:51

   Hello,

   I have tried installing XAMPP on Windows Vista Premium and as I went through the same messages pop-ups as you shown. In my case the port 80 unavailabity prevents me from starting Apache. Can you please help?

8. shane on March 2nd, 2008 13:35

   Hi Morgan,

   The obvious first step is to close down anything that normally would access the internet, for example browsers, firewalls etc and try again.

   Something else I have found interesting is that sometimes, even though the XAMPP control panel won’t let me start the service, if I directed my browser to localhost, it all seemed to work fine anyway. If you haven’t already, give that a go as well and see if it works.

   I’ll have a play with XAMPP and see if there are any workarounds or solutions. If you can let me know how it goes, I’ll see if anything I find can help you.

9. Dino on March 11th, 2008 14:38

   hi everyone , I install xamp easily i just don’t understand when i put php script on and everything the users try to register on site and they never get confirmation code on e-mail , my mercurymail server i think is not working or somthing can sombody help me please .

10. shane on March 11th, 2008 22:15

    Hi Dino,

    I just want to confirm some details. Are you saying that you have a website that is accessible via the internet and you have used XAMPP as your server, database and PHP stack?

    If that is the case, you’re probably aware that is generally not advisable given the insecure nature of a default XAMPP install.

    I’m not much of an expert on XAMPP being used for externally accessible websites as I only use it to set up local copies of blogs on my laptop for theme hacking etc. However, if you can give some more detail I will see what I can do to help.

11. Justin on March 21st, 2008 23:13

    I’m having trouble with the latest XAMPP (1.6.6a) on my computer, which is running Vista x86 Ultimate.

    The installation runs fine and both Apache and mySQL are able to run. In fact, I can even go through the XAMPP pages in the localhost directory and they all appear to work as they should.

    However, when I try to insert my own PHP pages (even a simple test file containing something like “”), it doesn’t run the PHP code (i.e. I’m able to see the source code through the browser, which I shouldn’t be able to). Also, external CSS files fail to be put to use (they need to be embedded to work).

    I have tried both in my own specified folder as well as in the xampp folder as some people suggested, but both result in the same situation.

12. Justin on March 21st, 2008 23:17

    Guess I shouldn’t have added the PHP tags to the quote. I wrote ‘echo “hello”;’

    I forgot to mention that I tried some of the other server applications such as EasyPHP and found that PHP still didn’t work.

13. shane on March 22nd, 2008 13:40

    Justin,

    I haven’t come across that one before. I’ll look into it and report back when I know some more.

14. Daquan on March 30th, 2008 14:30

    Hello, I’m having problems with xampp. I have always had this problem and it seems that I can always see the php source code in the browser. Both the mysql and apache services are running in the control panel. I went to look at the local host page and it looks fine but then I go look at some of the php pages and I see the code on the page and can always see it when I open the source code. Basically I can’t do anything with it because php isn’t working right and I can’t get wordpress to function correctly with it either. Please get back to me, preferably e-mail since I’m not familiar with this site but I’ll bookmark just this page incase.

15. shane on April 1st, 2008 20:09

    Justin,

    Are you trying to access your own php pages through browser or are you opening them up from your file manager (eg Windows Explorer)?

    I’ve been caught up with work and study this week and haven’t had a chance to update my own installation to 1.6.6a to see if there are any conflicts with the latest version.

16. Justin on April 4th, 2008 22:24

    I’ve been trying to open the pages with my browser (both FireFox and Internet Explorer). I guess I over-exaggerated a bit though. It seems an echo “hello”; will work fine.

    The code that I tried to use that didn’t work was $time = time() + microtime(), and further in I had echo round(time() + microtime() - $time, 4);

    I’ve used this code in other pages on my laptop (which is running an older version of Xampp on Windows XP Home) and it works fine there.

    What troubles me more is the fact that even external CSS files (connected through use of the link tag) don’t even seem to work. I feel that perhaps there is some connection between the two issues.

    I believe Daquan is probably experiencing the same problem.

17. shane on April 5th, 2008 0:00

    I’m not much of a PHP guru I’m afraid (a better knowledge of PHP is on ‘The List’) so I don’t know if I can help you with the specifics. I’m more of a use pre-existing tools for my own purposes I suppose with hacking/tweaking on the side.

    Having said that, if you’ve got an example of the PHP code and HTML/PHP where you’re trying to link to the CSS available for download somehwere (or you can email it to me at shane@techwhimsy.com) I’m happy to have a look at it when I can and see what I can make of it. I have a gut feeling you’re right in that the two are connected.

    Daquan does seem to have a similar problem although initially it was more due to using File -> Open File instead of File - Open Location to access the locally hosted PHP files.

    I’m sorry I can’t be more use at the moment. It does seem a strange one as for me XAMPP has worked first time, every time.

18. Justin on April 5th, 2008 22:46

    I suppose I really should have tried doing what I just did earlier. I moved the files over to my laptop and noticed that, quite surprisingly, the PHP still wasn’t being processed (i.e. it was just getting spit out to the browser). And I know that PHP does work on that laptop (I’ve been building all my web pages with it), so I figured maybe it’s actually something else and the encoding type was the first thing to come to mind.

    I opened the file up with Notepad and did a Save As, and noticed that the encoding was set to Unicode. I think I may have actually run into this problem before some number of years ago, but had completely forgotten about the lack of compatibility with “Unicode” encoding.

    After changing the encoding to UTF-8, the PHP is actually being processed and even the external CSS files are being read, like they should be.

19. deepthi on April 22nd, 2008 3:04

    Hi,
    I installed the xampp succesfully, and my apache and mysql in the control panel show running and status ok…
    but when i open the http://localhost/ in my explorer i get a 403 forbiddne error. can you please tell me why i am getting this.

    thanks in advance..

20. shane on April 22nd, 2008 22:29

    Hi deepthi,

    I haven’t come across this problem before. I’ll look into it and report back.

21. d88w7a9 on April 28th, 2008 2:53

    i am trying to install this to a dynamic dns site.. it will not let me route this to an external site. i have all security measures secure so it is okay to have this external… help!

22. shane on April 28th, 2008 8:06

    I’m not really sure how to fix this one. I’ve never tried to setup up XAMPP for an external site. I’ve only ever used it for development and testing purposes on my own machine.

    I’ll see what I can find out but I don’t know how much help I can be here I’m afraid.

23. David on May 2nd, 2008 6:15

    I have a control panel even though I got the port 80 or 443 error. When I go to my local host it looks like an FTP screen. IT says “INDEX of/”
    # Thumbs.db
    # apache_pb.gif
    # apache_pb.png
    # apache_pb22.gif
    # apache_pb22.png
    # apache_pb22_ani.gif

    Can you help, please? thanks

24. shane on May 2nd, 2008 8:14

    Hi David,

    Can you link to a screenshot of what the localhost looks like, or can you email one to me? My email is shane@techwhimsy.com I’m happy to take a look and see if I can fix it.

25. Stanley on May 10th, 2008 13:35

    I’ve installed XAMPP 14 ways to Sunday and I still never get access to a control panel. I am running a WIN2000 fully updated. I am using this to install Joomla! on my PC for learning purposes. But I can not figure out why I’m not getting the control panel. http://localhost works fine. Any idea?
    Thanks

26. shane on May 10th, 2008 20:34

    Hi Stanley,

    If localhost is working fine (ie you get the XAMPP page as pictured above in Step 3) then you don’t really need to have access to the Control Panel. If localhost works, XAMPP should be up and running and you should be able install Joomla just fine (which, oddly enough, I have a screencast on how to do just that here - http://techwhimsy.com/local-development-how-to-install-joomla-on-your-local-windows-machine).

    I can’t remember the last time I even bothered to open up the Control Panel. I generally just use the start_xampp.exe file to get it all up and running.

27. newby on May 13th, 2008 4:42

    After installing xampp on a vista machine it worked well. When I restarted the my computer Apache wouldn’t run any more and always causes blue-screens. What can I do?

28. shane on May 13th, 2008 8:31

    This might seem like a stuipd question but did you install Apache separately to XAMPP?

    The only instances I have heard about where Apache causes a blue screens on Vista is the standalone installation of Apache.

    Sometimes things can go screwy in any installation. Uninstalling and re-installing can also work as well.

29. newby on May 14th, 2008 0:43

    Hi,
    Thanks for your answer!
    The problem seems to be caused by the way user rights are managed by Windows Vista. Before the installation began, I was adviced not to choose “Program Files” as destination folder.
    This time I didn’t ignore that and everything works fine :-)
    I’m puzzled about Vista’s managament of user rights anyway.

30. shane on May 14th, 2008 8:07

    If I understand the changed permissions correctly (and I might not…), Vista has tightened up what programs in the ‘Program Files’ folder can and cannot do. I believe it’s an attempt to stop rogue programs opening up security holes.

    I find having XAMPP in the root C: directory easier to manage anyway - less folders to click through.

    I’m glad it’s worked out for you, and I can add one more thing to my troubleshooting checklist if anyone else has the same problem.

31. Manikanta on May 17th, 2008 3:16

    When i installed xampp .it is ok .while checking php pages.it is giving an error that is username &password are not correct.
    who to create a user in xammp

32. shane on May 18th, 2008 13:59

    Hi Manikanta,

    That’s an unusual problem as XAMPP shouldn’t ask for a username and password just to view pages written in PHP.

    Did you install XAMPP under a user account on your computer that had administrator priveleges?

33. XAMPP Tutorial on May 24th, 2008 3:42

    [...] TechWhimsy, Local Development: Installing XAMPP. [...]

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