A program that allows you to install Apache, PHP and MySQL in a single step and easily on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris systems.
There are several programs like this one, which install everything we need to start programming in PHP, several of which we have already discussed at .com. Now it is the turn of XAMPP, an installer for Apache, PHP and the MySQL database, which allows these programs to be correctly configured, without having to worry about the details of each one.
What really makes XAMPP special is that it has distributions for different operating systems: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Solaris. So we can use it almost on any operating system that we may have.
We can find the program and documentation on the product page: apachefriends.org
Well yes, it is a program that can save us a lot of headaches for those of us who want to use PHP on our computer. Installing all of these programs, and specifically getting PHP to work on top of Apache is often not a trivial problem. Many of us know this from experience. With XAMPP we can install everything in a few minutes. And also have a series of accessory applications and servers that will expand the benefits of the platform.
All this with zero cost, since XAMPP is offered free of charge, as well as all the software that the package contains.
From the XAMPP home page we can see the list of distributions by operating system. We can access any of the options to find detailed documentation of that distribution.
For example, the Windows distribution (at the time of writing this article XAMPP 1.6.2) basically installs the following programs:
- MySQL 5.0.41
- PHP 5.2.2
- PHP 4.4.7
- phpMyAdmin 2.10.1
Obviously these versions are changing in Xampp. They currently install PHP 7.4, for example, or MariaDB 10.4.11. By the way, it is interesting that they have replaced MySQL with MariaDB. If you want to know more about these two compatible database alternatives, visit the article
Although later, in the normal installation, other elements such as Webalizer, Filezilla FTP Server, Mercury Mail Transport, Zend Optimizer, etc. are also included. Within the XAMPP offers for Windows there is also a LITE version, which installs the minimum necessary to be able to work, and some Add-ons to have Perl or the Tomcat server.
It is as simple as entering the XAMPP page, downloading the latest version and running the installer. Then we can manage the servers through a control panel found in Start – Programs – Apache Friends – XAMPP.
Attention for Windows Vista users: In the usual Windows Vista program installation directories, write permissions are sometimes missing or insufficient, so it is recommended to install XAMPP in another system directory, for example c:xampp or any other .
Once installed we can open the XAMPP control panel to start the servers, at least Apache to start with.
If Apache is started correctly we can access the home page of our server by typing the following address on our server:
http://localhost/
A web page from the XAMPP server will have to appear, confirming that everything is working correctly.
Note: If you wish, you can see a where a guide is also offered to configure Mercury, the SMTP server included in Xampp to enable sending email from PHP pages when you are working locally.
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