WAMP Server
For many of us, websites are a necessity – an evil one sometimes – of life. We have a blog or two along with our church sites. We have a twitter account in addition to our facebook account. But have you ever wanted to run a website locally, meaning that you don’t need to have a web hosting account? Maybe you would like to put up a WIKI or maybe even a development blog so you could customize it offline and then upload the files. Here’s how you can do it.
Most blogging software, at least the most popular blogging software, runs on a code base called PHP. PHP is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP module, which generates the web page document. If you see a web page with the file extension php, that page uses, most likely, php code to generate html which is interpreted by your browser.
PHP was originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995 and has been in continuous development ever since. I first encountered php in 1997 working for a internet startup in Florida. It runs most efficiently on a linux platform, which also includes the mac which is based on FreeBSD, a unix/linux operating system first developed by AT&T. PHP makes use of many of the features of linux and its default web server software called Apache. However, it will run on windows, both on their server platforms and their home versions.
Since most people run the windows platform (for what reason, I do not know) I want to talk with you about setting up a windows server implementation so that you could run a php website on your own laptop, a home network, or an internal corporate network (usually called an intranet). Why would you want to do this, you ask? Maybe you want to run an internal project management program. Several are out there (and I will give you a good one to use next week) that are web-based and can be set up to run on an internal server application. Another reason you might want to set up an internal server is to use an opensource Customer Resource Management (CRM) package to keep track of your church members. Instead of a high-priced software package, you may be able to use a free web-based version. There are many reasons to want an internal server.
Setting this up is really very easy on a windows computer. The only thing you need to run PHP on a windows computer is WAMP. WAMP stands for Windows – Apache – MySql – PHP. It is a the windows version of LAMP: Linux – Apache – MySQL – PHP. This is an implementation for windows of the Apache webserver, the php modules for processing php code, and the database software MySQL, the most used opensource database software on the market. To install all of these, you simply go to wampserver.com, download the free install program, and install the software on the computer. The install will put an icon in the lower right corner of your windows installation (down near the clock) which will allow you to start/stop its services and gain access to the server settings. It also includes the web software phpmyadmin, a web interface for the MySQL database server.
From there, you can download the software you want to install, place it in the appropriate folder on your computer, make sure the services are started, and then run the install part of the software you downloaded. Get the ip address of that computer, and as long and that computer is on a network, you can access the website from any computer on the network.
If are interested in this, and need more help, contact me or leave a comment.
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David is an entrepreneur, pastor, coach, and author. He has his doctorate from George Fox Seminary where he studied under Len Sweet, his M.Div. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and has done post graduate work in communications from the University of Alabama and the University of South Florida. He lives with his wife Brenna Phillips in Smyrna, DE. 
