When you setup a homepage on a hosting account, soon you will feel the need to play around and test your site on your local machine before submitting to the host.
There are many different programs around, quite some OpenSource and therefore free to download to accomplish this task.
- WAMP very popular
- XAMPP these two seem to be the most popular and are free (PGL licence)
- Another, very easy to install is a program from Croatia - VertrigoServ
This one I installed just recently to test, quick and easy to install and use.
Please note: With a free membership you may download only older versions, for updates and support you would need a paid subscription. This was implemented just recently. Site is updated and on a new URL (my link is modified)
The JSAS localhost server I'm using for quite some time, it is one of the smallest in size to download and install, from JoomlaSolutions. It's installed quick and easy and there is already a joomla site installed, just remove it if you are not gonna setup a Joomla site. JSAS can be used to test any php or perl site such as a Wordpress Blog for example.
easyPHP
EasyPHP is very similar in size to download and operate like JSAS but it is real OpenSource Software. I have it installed a short time ago, and testing it now, will post about my experience soon.
Well what happened lately;
I was at the point where I would have to install Windows from scratch. I found about 16 hard disks installed (with only 2 physically there) in my registry and booting took about 10 minutes. So after some thoughts I decided to try out Linux and installed Ubuntu from the free available Live CD from Canonical.
Now I've got a complete Open Source PC after about 18 years with all Windows versions. But as JSAS is not available for Linux I had to look for an alternative program. I will discontinue this article and open a new one for XAMPP which I installed now.
