What is WAMP?
Well WAMP stands for Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP. This is a Windows version of the very common LAMP stack/installation. LAMP being Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Both do essentially the same thing, and allow you to run a huge array of Open source and commercial applications that are coded in PHP and use MySQL’s Database as a back-end. I personally prefer using the native LAMP stack, but for testing purposes a WAMP install will do just fine.
Costs?
WAMP is free under the GPL License so you can go ahead and download it and review the terms and use it.
Installation
- Download the appropriate WAMP
installer from
http://www.wampserver.com/en/#download-wrapper - If you have UAC enabled you will
need to allow the installer to run.
- Click Next
- Review the Terms, select I accept
and click Next
- Select the location of the
installation. This is where you will be saving all of your files used in your
installation so if this is going to run from a different directory set it now.
Click Next
- You can select if you want
shortcuts. I like shortcuts, select them and click Next
- Click Install
- Apache, MySQL and PHP are all
going to be installed so this will take a few minutes…
- Now you will be asked to select
your browse executable. This is linked to the install so you should select your
default browser, IE, Firefox, Chrome etc… If you don’t know if uses Explorer by
default. Click Open.
- If you have an SMTP server you are
using enter the information in. If you don’t know what this is or you don’t
have one, click next.
- Select to run Wamp and then Click Finish
WAMP will now be running….
You should have a little WAMP icon in your taskbar.
From this you can control
starting and stopping the services, browsing to the various install folders,
edit config files etc…