When I first started working on my own websites I only used HTML pages, which are great, but you reach a point where you want to spend more of your time writing content, and less time working on your HTML coding. Then you start to realise that a content management system (CMS) is needed. I guess you could use Dreamweaver and its templates, but your website will still be HTML, and this reduces your flexibility somewhat.
Of course the problem with most cms software (and blogging tools are included here) is that they are usually written in php and have a database to manage your pages. This is great because it lets you do so much more with your website, but now you can't test your website on your own computer anymore, it needs to be tested on a webserver. If you have 'Windows XP Home edition' installed on your computer, you'll know that a webserver doesn't ship with our version. Thankfully I found a solution.
Getting a Webserver onto Windows XP Home
Ronda, Spain, Spanish, Themes, and Everything Else
Getting a Webserver onto Windows XP Home
Monday, December 12. 2005
Getting a Webserver
I found once I migrated to my first blog that I couldn't design and test templates, or even install plugins on my website without the whole world seeing me do that. Now if you're like me and take pride in your website looking good all the time, then the last thing you want to do is test anything on your actual website. This is where a test server is so handy.
A quick Google will bring up pages and pages of helpful information about running a webserver under Windows XP Home, and a lot of that information will be so confusing you'd be forgiven for running full-speed into a brick wall to try and clear your head!
After wading through literally hundreds of pages, yeah I know it sounds like a lot but you also don't even bother reading most of them because the first few words make you realise you're out of your depth. I even tried talking to people on forums to get some idea of what to do. Luckily someone took pity on me and suggested checking out one of the WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, php) packages. These make installing your test server really easy.
I found the following;
1. Xampp
2. Wampserver
3. Easy Web Server
4. Uniform Web Server
5. e-novative WAMP
There are a bunch more if you keep searching, but this should give you a good starting point. Good luck.
I found once I migrated to my first blog that I couldn't design and test templates, or even install plugins on my website without the whole world seeing me do that. Now if you're like me and take pride in your website looking good all the time, then the last thing you want to do is test anything on your actual website. This is where a test server is so handy.
A quick Google will bring up pages and pages of helpful information about running a webserver under Windows XP Home, and a lot of that information will be so confusing you'd be forgiven for running full-speed into a brick wall to try and clear your head!
After wading through literally hundreds of pages, yeah I know it sounds like a lot but you also don't even bother reading most of them because the first few words make you realise you're out of your depth. I even tried talking to people on forums to get some idea of what to do. Luckily someone took pity on me and suggested checking out one of the WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, php) packages. These make installing your test server really easy.
I found the following;
1. Xampp
2. Wampserver
3. Easy Web Server
4. Uniform Web Server
5. e-novative WAMP
There are a bunch more if you keep searching, but this should give you a good starting point. Good luck.
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