Xampp and Wordpress revisited

Posted on April 11, 2009 | Category: Wordpress, xammp

I do very little website design these days. I only ever did it for myself and some friends, and we are mostly catered for now. However I’ve moved most of us to a wordpress cms, and finetuning can be a pain if you have to ftp every change. Enter Xampp and Wordpress.
I had installed xampp a few years ago, thanks to a tutorial by a blogger called Rumore. Unfortunately Rumore seems to have gone offline, and I had forgotten how to do it.

Complicating matters was the fact that every time I tried to download Xampp for Linux, the download would first of all download quickly and then very soon crawl to a halt. I didn’t realise for a while that the the reason terminal couldn’t unpack the file properly was because it was so incomplete.
What to do? I tried several times, before I realised I’d have to rely on wget in terminal.

But I didn’t know how to do that either.

After much searching I found the perfect tutorial: Install XAMPP on Ubuntu on Human Language Weblog (there’s also an How to Install Lamp tutorial on the same Weblog).

Previously I couldn’t figure out what was causing the slow download. The Xampp website redirected me to Sourceforge and that obviously spotted I was in Ireland and so I was marked for download from HEANet.

I’ve noticed that Ubuntu update is very slow too. Is it HEANet, a fault in the download manager, or my serivce provider? I’m not sure.

Anyway, wget ran into the same problems of a slow and disconnecting download, the difference being that it reconnected automatically, and eventually I had my full 54 Mb package, and everything installed without a hitch. and I secured Xampp as per instructions.

Then I realised I’d forgotten how to create a MySql database for Wordpress. Fortunately, I found another excellent tutorial How To Create A New SQL Database using phpMyAdmin on My Own Server Personal Web Server Howto. It’s illustrated so you can’t go wrong. In the introduction on the home page the author says he has put many hours into making his tutorials simple, and certainly in this one he’s succeeded admirably.

So now you’ve the database, with username and password. Paste the db name, the username and password into wp-config.sample, save it as wp-config as usual, make sure Xampp is up and running, and type http://localhost/yourubuntuusername/wordpress and Wordpress will finish the installation as on the web.

One last thing. If you’re happy with the permalink stucture as it is, well and good, but if you prefer a Custom Structure go to Settings, Permalinks in Wordpress, choose your preferred permalink structure, eg
/%postname%/
save changes and paste the generated code into a text editor and save it as .htaccess to your wordpress
folder, /opt/lampp/htdocs/yourubuntuusername/wordpress

There’s lots of things you can do with a .htaccess file, but that’s enough for now

» Filed Under Wordpress, xammp

2 Responses to “Xampp and Wordpress revisited”

1. David Says:
   August 3rd, 2009 at 6:00 am

   Hey Philip,
   I found this article when checking to see what all had links to my website out of curiosity. I wanted to thank you very much for your kind words regarding my website and tutorials. My site was offline for a few months due to the fact I was self-hosting it and could no longer afford the internet bill. I’ve momentarily found free hosting, but it’s limiting and I hope to soon acquire better hosting and start re-developing the tutorials and updating them with newer versions.
   I got a bit discouraged due to a lack of feedback and neglected the project for some time, but after reading articles like this and the feedback on my youtube videos, I’m going to try and invest a little time on a continuing basis and keep it going. It’s helped so many people and that was my goal to begin with.

   So thank you for your encouragement.

2. Philip Says:
   August 3rd, 2009 at 8:12 am

   Hello David
   I am so pleased to hear from you and that my compliment has helped encourage you to continue. I know how you feel. I have several sites and though I can see from stats that they are widely accessed and I know the information is widely used, I get very little reaction or acknowledgement That’s the way things are but it’s very nice to get the occasional feedback.
   I actually missed your site as I wanted to set up another database offline but had forgotten how to do it. Now that your tutorial is back I can do it. Thanks!
   Re hosting, I can’t recommend my own host here in Ireland
   highly enough.

   http://letshost.ie/hosting/hosting_complete_plan.php

   I’m not sure where you’re based, but they have great email support, and 25 add-on domains for the price of one! And no, I don’t have shares or commission ;>)

   Keep up the good work. Much appreciated.
   Philip

Leave a Reply