2010-05-31 WampServer
WAMP bundle
A fast way to get Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP (WAMP) solution stack up and running on Windows is to install a WAMP bundle. There are quite a few such bundles, and they contain various extras. Wikipedia has an entire page comparing WAMP bundles features.
This article is about WampServer, a WAMP bundle with just one extra.
WampServer
The WampServer software bundle consist of Apache, MySQL and PHP for Windows,
and just one extra: phpMyAdmin, a popular administration tool for MySQL.
All that comes in a single installation package. You do not get the very latest versions
of the various products, but you do get
versions that go together. You also get a handy taskbar interface for performing
basic tasks.
download and install
Download of WampServer does not require any registration. The WampServer 2.0i. download is a installer of about 16 MB. Once it has downloaded, you double-click it to start the installation.
firewall
Installing a web server and database server is serious stuff that impact your
system, so you are likely to receive quite a few pop-ups from your firewall or
other system protection software, for example warnings that http.exe
(that is the Apache web server) wants to start automatically when Windows starts
up, or that mysql.exe is wants to act as a server and is trying to
connect to the Internet.
Wizard
This installer has a typical installation Wizard interface. The installer defaults to installing WampServer in
C:\wamp, instead of the
Program Files directory, but you can choose any directory you like.
The Wizard offers to create Desktop and Quick Launch icons.
Once you've made your choices, the entire bundle of software in installed in the WampServer directory. Apache, MySQL and PHP do not end up in their usual directories, but are all installed in subdirectories of the WampServer directory.
web browser
The Wizards ends with a clumsy dialog. It asks you to Please choose your default
browser
, and defaults to explorer.exe
, the Windows Explorer. This may
lead you think that you are being asked to specify a file browser like Windows
Explorer, but you should specify a web browser. I browsed to the Google Chrome
directory to choose chrome.exe
.
Oddly, this choice is not configurable through any WampServer menu, if you want to change the browser WampServer uses, you need to change the wampmanager.ini file in many places.
PHP mail
Once I allowed the Apache HTTP server, WampServer popped the next question: my
PHP mail
parameters. Some default values are filled in.
WampServer does not come with an email server. You can replace the default
values with those for any already existing email server on any system, such as
your regular email account. The name of the SMTP server should not be
hard to find, and is usually smtp.servername. For example, the SMTP server for Google Mail is smtp.gmail.com.
Unless you really want to receive emails from WampServer, it is not necessary to set this up. You can ignore this dialog and simply continue to the next one. If you do want to change these setting later, you can modify the PHP.INI file. You don't need to search for that file, there is a PHP.INI menu item on WampServer's menu.
starting up
The final dialog of the WampServer installation wizard offers to Launch
WampServer 2 now
. It is checked by default, and you should leave it checked,
because the installation is not really over yet.
As you start WampServer for the first time, you'll probably have to deal with
one or two pop-ups from from your firewall. Getting that over with is one reason
to start WampServer. The other reasons is a blank password.
user interface
WampServer does not automatically start on Windows start-up. You start WampServer by choosing the
WampServer icon. WampServer does not show a splash screen or a dialog box to
confirm that it is
starting up, it merely creates a tray icon. That tray icon provides a user
interface to manage the server and its settings.
When you have just started WampServer, WampServer is running, but the services
it manages are not running yet. To really get things going, you have to choose
the Start all Services
menu item.
WampServer menu
A left-click on tray icon brings up WampServer's main menu. A right-click on the tray icon, brings upanother, small menu. There is an About menu, but it only provides some information about WampServer. It does not tell which version of Apache, MySQL and PHP have been installed and whether the servers are running or not. The most interesting option on this menu is the ability to choose another language.
The help menu item is of dubious value. There is no Windows help file. It leads to HTML pages instead, but not to local HTML pages. It leads to the WampServer web site, and manages to annoy by defaulting to a French pages while I have the English user interface selected, and that page isn't a help at all, but the product overview page. There are no help pages.
The top menu item of the main menu, localhost
, opens http://localhost/ in
your browser. Browsing to http://localhost/ when you do not have a
web server running will result in a typical failed connection screen.
When you have started all WampServer services, you'll get to see your server's home page.
The WampServer home page provides a quick overview of what has been installed. In this case, Apache HTTP Server version 2.2.11, MySQL 5.1.36, PHP version 5.3.0 and a bunch of PHP extensions. There is nothing special about this list of extensions, these extensions are all built into PHP for Windows.
phpMyAdmin
The phpmyadmin
link under Tools
leads to the phpMyAdmin page.
If you follow that link, you'll see a red-on-yellow warning box at the bottom of the phpMyAdmin
page reminding you that have not set a MySQL password for user root yet, and
that this leaves your MySQL server open to intrusion.
You are user root, user root@localhost to
be precise. On UNIX
and UNIX derivates such as Linux, user root is the one with full access to
everything, just like Administrator on Windows. Obviously, not setting a password is bad.
This is really something the installation Wizard should have taken care of. You
should set a password immediately, and you can do so on the Privileges
tab of
phpMyAdmin. Just click on the Privileges
tab to navigate to phpMyAdmin's
privileges page.
The table on the privileges shows that user root has no
password although user root has ALL PRIVILEGES
on the local server, both through
its IP address 127.0.0.1 and the hostname localhost.
There is no need to change privileges, but you should set a password. Clicking
the icon at the end of the row brings up the Edit Privileges screen for that
user. That screen is fairly long, but it is divided into section with titles along the top.
Scroll down to the section Change Password
, type some password twice, and then click the Go
button in the bottom right corner of that section.
phpMyAdmin confirms the change with the message The password for 'root'@'localhost'
was changed successfully
along the top of the screen.
There is no need to do this twice. Changing the password for localhost
automatically changes the password for 127.0.0.1, as localhost is just a friendly name for 127.0.0.1.
access denied
Now, if phpMyAdmin were better designed, this would be it. But if you hit the browser back button to surf back to the Privileges screen, you do not get to see the privileges screen again, you merely get to see a box that tells you that access has been denied.
To regain access to phpMyAdmin, you need to change the config.inc.php configuration file. WampServer's tray icon menu has a menu item
for the php.ini file, but it does not have a menu item for config.inc.php. You
need to browse to the phpMyAdmin directory for WampServer 2.0i
with phpMyAdmin 3.1, it is wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.1) and edit config.inc.php
manually.
The only thing you need to change to regain phpMyAdmin access is to enter
your password within the quotes that are already there. It is also a good idea,
now that you have set a root password, to disallow access with a blank password,
by setting AllowNoPassword to false.
Having a plain text password in some configuration file is not an admirable
security practice. This simple configuration change does take of the biggest
security issue, full access to the databases without a password. The phpMyAdmin
site provides information on better ways set up security. I personally feel that
a WampServer should have included a more polished administration tool.
MySQL character set
MySQL should be configured to use Unicode by default.
The phpMyAdmin page shows that the MySQL charset is UTF-8 and the MySQL connection collation is
utf8_general_ci. That is how it should be.
No change is needed.
local
The bottom menu item on WampServer's menu allows you to toggle WampServer's status between online and offline. Do not misunderstand that menu item. It does not turn WampServer on or off, it does not start or stop any services, it really toggles WampServer between being online and being offline, between being on the Internet and off the Internet.
WampServer defaults to providing local services. Anyone who tries to access
your web server from anywhere else, even other PCs in your local network, will
be denied access. You can enable outside access by choosing the main menu item Put
Online.
There are a few issue you need to pay attention to, such as your
router and firewall settings, and perhaps even your ISP blocking you from
running your own web server. However, the bigger issue is whether you really
want to provide the outside world access to your PC. Allowing online access is
something you should not decide lightly.
updates
2011-04-23 Linux.org
The linux.org domain seems to have disappeared early in February of 2011. The broken link has been removed.
links
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