February 15th, 2010 | 
Author: 
This is just a quick post to tell you about one of my favorite development tools: WampServer. “Wamp” is an acronym for “Windows-Apache-MySQL-PHP”. WampServer is simply an all-in-one package that will have you up and running data-driven PHP apps locally in no time. It’s cheaper than IIS (as in, it don’t cost nothin), and easier than installing them all on your own individually. WampServer will put a little icon in your task tray which you can right-click on to mess with the configuration (individual apache/php modules, etc), but the default configuration is pretty good already. So uh, go download it.
Tags: programming
XAMPP is what I used to use. I think I’m still running it on both of my PCs, actually.
Before that, I manually installed Apache, PHP, and MySQL. But I still think Postgresql is a better database for the kinds of development I’ve done. MySQL is great for retrieve-heavy access though … like websites with dynamically generated pages.
Of course, I’ve gotten in the habit of generating static versions of pages that don’t change much. Nothing wrong with dynamic content, but if the content don’t change much, the static pages load much much faster. Basically just "pre-compile" your pages and deliver them.
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As for XAMPP itself:
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html
* Apache 2.2.14 (IPv6 enabled) + OpenSSL 0.9.8l
* MySQL 5.1.41 + PBXT engine
* PHP 5.3.1
* phpMyAdmin 3.2.4
* Perl 5.10.1
* FileZilla FTP Server 0.9.33
* Mercury Mail Transport System 4.72