XAMPP

Introduction

This week's work involves setting up XAMPP on my system. I have used WAMP extensively in the past as a development and test platform for developing Joomla templates. I have had no issues with it and found it very useful for working on Joomla sites locally. Porting the developed sites onto live servers have sometimes proved problematic. The big advantage with Joomla as a CMS is that it functionality and features can be enhanced by installing third party components and modules. Porting of locally developed sites involves re-installation of the components on the target server and nowadays I mostly work directly on the target server to avoid the extra waste of time although I still usually design the basic template on my local pc on WAMP.

When I had started using WAMP I had looked at other solutions and for the purposes of this week's work I have revisited the publishers and read up on some blogs by users who prefer these other solutions such as EasyPHP and AppServ. XAMPP seems to be a very popular solution.

Installing XAMPP

Before installing XAMPP, I decided that it would be better to uninstall WAMP as it might later on cause issues with the XAMPP installation. Removal of WAMP did not cause any issues.

I downloaded XAMPP from www.apachefriends.org. I went for the installer version as the text clearly showed that this would be the easier installation option. I was asked if I would like to install Apache, Filezilla and MySQL as a service. I assumed that installing them as a service would allow them to be used even when XAMPP is not loaded. As my system is already bloated with a multitude of services, I decided to not install these as a service.

The image shows the control panel as it appeared straight after the installation was completed. As I had selected not to install Apache and FileZilla as a service it has to be started up manually.

I first started up Apache which started up without any complaints.  I noticed that although the log at the bottom of the control panel was showing that Apache was started, the "Running" label did not appear next to the Apache text as it shows near the MySQL service. I am, at this stage,  not sure that Apache is running properly. Test should be able to prove this later on.

When attempting to start FileZilla I was told that it can only be installed as a service but at least I was allowed to install it as a service there and then. I then decided that to avoid potential problems I would install Apache as a service too and again I was allowed to but the green "Running" label still did not show up.

This image shows the missing "Running" label showing that Apache is indeed running.

I then tested the setup by attempting to browse to http://127.0.0.1. The browser displayed a simple html page  that I had once placed in the inetpub folder which is the Microsoft IIs Webserver default web page. I then understood why Apache would not start. I had the IIs server running. I then stopped the "Web Publishing" service from the Administrative Tools in the Control Panel and tried again This time the XAMPP control panel showed that Apache did start successfully.



Testing XAMPP

 

The above image shows the initial XAMPP page loaded. This is on the development machine itself. Once I clicked on English and then proceeded to the first screen I clicked on "Status" in the left menu and I saw that I may have an issue with the MySQL installation as shown in the report below :

After spending two hours attempting to solve the MySQL "Deactivated" issue, I decided that perhaps it would be easier to uninstall the old MySQL installation that I had installed previously on my system. I uninstalled it using the "Add/Remove Program" from the control panel and tried again by restarting the MySQL Service through the XAMPP control panel and it seemed to work. I then checked the status as shown below which showed that indeed it was working fine. 

I then tested the https:// version of XAMPP by typing https://127.0.0.1 in a browser . I was told that this was an untrusted connection probably because no valid certificate is installed. I added a security exception for this site and the browser displayed the XAMPP pages correctly.

The above image shows the testing of the FTP FileZilla server from another machine on the network. I used the ip address of the developement machine where XAMPP is installed and the default login and password. I had no issues with this test. The FTP service is working.

Solving the security issues
The image above  shows the installed XAMPP security report and shows that there are issues with security. As this is a development machine these issues should not pose a real threat however I decided to tackle them regardless. Running the security console and adding a root password for the MySQL super user cured the MySQL and Php security issues.

Adding a password for XAMPP throuh the security console also solved the issue with XAMPP pages being accessible over the network by everyone. At this stage I am unsure if this is indeed desirable or not but for the purposes of this exercise I decided to proceed.

I then had to change the password for FileZilla and I did this through "fileZilla server Interface.exe" file that is located in the FilleZilla folder within the XAMPP folder. The FileZilla interface is shown below :

The above shows the new security report with the issues  resolved except for the PHP Safe Mode issue. I decided to take XAMPP's own advice and leave php not in safe mode as this is after all installed on a development machine.

The image above shows the php report for the setup.

The image above shows the usage (visitor) report generated through the XAMPP home page. It's interesting to note that they are entried for May 2009 which are from an earlier installation of Apache that I had installed on the same machine.

The image above shows the new entry which I added to the default guestbook application which is included with XAMPP. It worked flawlessly out of the box !

Changing the default html page

It took me a little while to realise that I have to use http://127.0.0.1/index.html to display the default html page that is included in the htdocs folder. Looking through some blog posts about this subject, I found that the default page can be changed so that its accessible through http://127.0.0.1 but for now I decided to leave it.

The image above shows the html as I changed it. I added a few DIVS to structure the page and some text in the header and footer of the page. The next image shows the CSS style sheet :

and finally, the next image shows the completed html page for this exercise:

The next image shows the test made from my other computer :

This next sceenshot shows the index.html file being edited on another computer :

I also uploaded files from the other PC successfully.

Conclusion

XAMPP seems to be an excellent solution for setting up a development platform on a Windows box. As I said in the introduction, I had tested other solutions and although considerable time has passed since then I do distinctly remember that WAMP had presented a tougher challenge and it had taken me considerably longer to get it running correctly.