See Sean’s comments above for an example.

Successfully operating your own server *requires* understanding a fair bit of how it works, it’s very difficult to “fake it.”

Here’s how to start:
* Make sure MySQL is working. Use the command line or a GUI program, doesn’t matter which. There’s lots of resources on the web for this.
* Make sure Apache is working.
* Make sure PHP is working. Again, lot’s of resources on the web for this.
* Make sure you have WordPress installed correctly. If you haven’t ever installed WordPress before, you might want to try that on real host.

THERE IS NO SHORTCUT! You have to actually learn it.

I spent 5 hours yesterday working on debugging a path issue in a single function call. Today, I’ll be looking through the WordPress source to see it actually works in detail. You may need to spend the better part of week or two drilling into your setup.

I edited the file, rebooted so Apache would start with the edited configuration file, pointed my browser to my local wordpress installation, and presto!

I’ve got Wordpress running on one of my machines now.

Very nice.

I’ve done this so many times… I now usually get it right but I never remember exactly what I did. Let’s take a look…

I’m still having some trouble getting everything up and running.

All in all. it took me 2 or 3 rounds of installing and uninstalling to get everything working.

This doesn’t surprise me. Everyone’s environment is just a little bit different, and these little differences are often invisible to the end user. For example, I just helped someone set this up a couple of days ago… and we thrashed for 45 minutes until we ended up rebooting his machine… whence everything Just Worked after that. On my last install, I didn’t have to reboot. Go figure.

The first major problem I had was that Apache was not loading correctly and PHP was not loading at all. I found that in the httpd.conf file for Apache, the directory to find PHP in was being defined 3 times. It looked like this:

#BEGIN PHP INSTALLER EDITS – REMOVE ONLY ON UNINSTALL
ScriptAlias /php/ “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
Action application/x-httpd-php “C:/Program Files/PHP/php-cgi.exe”
PHPIniDir “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
LoadModule php5_module “C:/Program Files/PHP/php5apache2_2.dll”
PHPIniDir “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
LoadModule php5_module “C:/Program Files/PHP/php5apache2.dll”
PHPIniDir “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
LoadModule php5_module “C:/Program Files/PHP/php5apache.dll”
#END PHP INSTALLER EDITS – REMOVE ONLY ON UNINSTALL

This looks like you installed PHP several (3?) times, without removing the directives from httpd.conf after each removal.

I put a hash in front of the second and third instance of:
PHPIniDir “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
to comment them out. Apache and PHP loaded after that.

Which may be why it loaded. Sometimes, you can do something like that, and for whatever reason, it decides to fire up anyway for some other reason.

The second problem I ran into was that PHP was not loading the mysql library. Because of this, my local Wordpress installation was failing to initialize. I solved this by following the instructions here:
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/faq.installation.php#faq.installation.addtopath

We had the same problem. Two possible solutions come to mind:

Install MySQL before PHP, making sure you get the MySQL “Add to Windows” path option checked. This is what I did and everything worked out of the box.

Install PHP first, then reboot your pc after installing MySQL. This is what Travis did Friday night.

I now have Wordpress installed in a directory …/htdocs/wordpress/test/. When I browse to …//localhost:8080/wordpress/test/, index.php does not load, and instead I see a listing of the contents of that directory. When I click on index.php in that list, nothing happens.

I am able to launch and run the Wordpress backend by browsing to …//localhost:8080/wordpress/test/wp-admin/index.php, but I have to click on the index.php file in the list in that directory to get it going.

So, the backend runs, but the front end does not. Further, when I browse to a directory, index.php is not automatically run. If I put a file in those directories called index.html, those will run.

Try the following. On or about line 239, add “index.php” to the DirectoryIndex module:

235
236
237
238
239
240
241

# DirectoryIndex: sets the file that Apache will serve if a directory
# is requested.
#
<ifmodule dir_module>
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</ifmodule><ifmodule>
</ifmodule>

If that works, I’ll add it into the article.

You’re very, very close.

All in all. it took me 2 or 3 rounds of installing and uninstalling to get everything working.

The first major problem I had was that Apache was not loading correctly and PHP was not loading at all. I found that in the httpd.conf file for Apache, the directory to find PHP in was being defined 3 times. It looked like this:

#BEGIN PHP INSTALLER EDITS – REMOVE ONLY ON UNINSTALL
ScriptAlias /php/ “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
Action application/x-httpd-php “C:/Program Files/PHP/php-cgi.exe”
PHPIniDir “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
LoadModule php5_module “C:/Program Files/PHP/php5apache2_2.dll”
PHPIniDir “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
LoadModule php5_module “C:/Program Files/PHP/php5apache2.dll”
PHPIniDir “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
LoadModule php5_module “C:/Program Files/PHP/php5apache.dll”
#END PHP INSTALLER EDITS – REMOVE ONLY ON UNINSTALL

I put a hash in front of the second and third instance of:
PHPIniDir “C:/Program Files/PHP/”
to comment them out. Apache and PHP loaded after that.

The second problem I ran into was that PHP was not loading the mysql library. Because of this, my local Wordpress installation was failing to initialize. I solved this by following the instructions here:
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/faq.installation.php#faq.installation.addtopath

I now have Wordpress installed in a directory …/htdocs/wordpress/test/. When I browse to …//localhost:8080/wordpress/test/, index.php does not load, and instead I see a listing of the contents of that directory. When I click on index.php in that list, nothing happens.

I am able to launch and run the Wordpress backend by browsing to …//localhost:8080/wordpress/test/wp-admin/index.php, but I have to click on the index.php file in the list in that directory to get it going.

So, the backend runs, but the front end does not. Further, when I browse to a directory, index.php is not automatically run. If I put a file in those directories called index.html, those will run.