Localhost Development

When developing a website, it is useful and crucial to develop it on your localhost(your PC) prior transferring to a real server (web hosting). Although not a necessity, learn to manage a localhost website is a great starting point before you can get on your hand on real web and server environment.

Initially, you will need to setup a localhost environment before you can install and start developing your website. This tutorial will guide you on how to setup your first localhost environment.

In this tutorial, you will learn on:

• Setting up a localhost environment

1. Download WAMP 5.1.7.4 software
   
   • Download the installation package from WAMPSERVER (19.8MB approximate file size)
     • WampServer is a piece of software that installs everything you need(Apache,PHP,MySQL) to turn your PC into a webserver.
2. Installing the software

• Once you have downloaded the file, double click on it to start the installation.
• A WAMPserver5 setup wizard will appear, click ‘Next’ to proceed

• Once the License agreement appears, select ‘I accept the agreement’ radio button and click on ‘Next’ button.

• At the ‘Select Destination Location’ you can change the install directory. The default is C:\wamp. You can change to other installation such as D:\wamp, E:\wamp, etc.. Click 'Next' to proceed.

• In the ‘Select Additional Tasks’, leave the box unchecked then click ‘Next’ to proceed

• At the ‘Ready to Install’ screen, click ‘Next’

• Installing screen will appear indicating the installation process

• In the middle of the installation, a pop-out box will appear requesting you to select the default publishing folder. The selected folder will be you website storage folder. Click ‘OK’ to use the default selection or browse to your favored file then click ‘OK’. If you are not sure about this option, just leave it as it is and click ‘OK’.

• Now, you will need to choose you default web browser. As you can see in the screenshot, the default browser is Internet Explorer (IE). Path file for optional browser are as provided below:
  • IE default path file should be C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplorer.exe
  • Firefox default path file should be C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe
  • At the last step, just click ‘Finish’ button to complete the installation

Now you have successfully installed you WAMP software on your PC. You could then proceed to next tutorial on “Installation and Setup of Joomla CMS on WAMP server’ on your PC.