Xampp Tutorial

Andy Melton’s XAMPP Server Installation Tutorial
XAMPP Server
Finally, after the Thanksgiving holiday I am able to sit down and start this blog article. In this one I want to go
through the steps that are involved in setting up your own web server. This web server will be one that you can
actually use to host a real world website or you can use it for testing your website or application offline.
What is XAMPP?
I decided that the quickest way to get you up and running with your own web server would be to use Apache
Friend’s XAMPP. XAMPP is an application that combines Apache (the web server), MySQL (database), PHP
(scripting language) and phpMyAdmin (database administration) all into one.
Normally, to set up a web server you’d have to install each of those individually. With XAMPP, you install one
application and you have a fully functional server. Now, you’re probably thinking, “Well, if it’s that easy then why
is this blog entry HUGE!?” Well. The reason this is a large entry is I am going to walk you through all the steps of
setting up XAMPP AND make sure that you set it up so that it is secure!
The default XAMPP installation is meant for developers on a local network, not for a real world installation,
however, there are ways of making the installation secure and ready for real world use. Also, there are a few
other things we’ll need to do other than installing XAMPP to get things going.
Installing on Fedora Core 5
There are many distributions of Linux out there, my distribution of choice is Fedora Core. I prefer it because I’ve
always had the most luck with it and have friends who use it. The steps contained within this article could be
easily applied to Ubuntu or another distribution.
You may also be asking me why I am going to install this using an outdated version of Fedora. The main reason
for this is that I have not had the time to sit down and do an install of XAMPP and all the other needed
applications on Fedora Core 6 to make sure everything works. I know it works with Fedora Core 5 and 6 is still a
little buggy. Maybe next year when 7 comes out I’ll update this article for installing it on 6!