XAMPP made easy

Ahhhh.. at last found something to write.
Want to create your own web server? Need to execute PHP, Perl with database connectivity? then XAMPP is your answer. Hey, i've found out that its easy to install and work with. I am using this software for Windows and its turned out quite simple and useful.

Download link: click here

A BRIEF TUTORIAL:

Installation:

Just follow the instructions blindly and you will end up installing it on your system.
It comes with Apache server, PHP, Perl, MySQL... and whole lot of other stuffs which i am totally unaware of...

How to use it?
After installing it just click on the XAMPP administrator icon on your desktop or just search for it !!! Now start all the servers. You can close the window and the servers will be running in background.
Now lets go to the business end. Open up your browser and type in localhost as the url. It will load the index page (http://localhost/xampp/) which has lots of info. about what you are running and some good examples.

Where to put my programs?

Everything you want to run can be kept in the /xampp/htdocs/ directory. This is the "/" (root) directory of your server.
The thing is every time you specify the url of a directory it tries to find the file named "index" .So ...
Warning: Dont delete the index.php file in htdocs directory. Its the one that comes up with the Info page that i talked about before. If you delete it you will have little trouble accessing the admin pages.
So the best thing is to create a directory inside the htdocs , say /htdocs/dir-name/ and then put your files inside it.

Just in case if you have deleted the index file , just type in the directory names in the URL and it will lead you to the corresponding admin pages.

How to access MySQL?

Very easy. Near the bottom-left corner go to TOOLS then click on phpMyAdmin which will take you to the Database admin page.
If you have little knowledge of databases you can play with it. The default username is "root" with no password. It is strongly advisable to make use of a password. You can create users and assign passwords and specify the permissions. If you want all permissions just check on all the options. Now create databases and use 'em.
Use the SQL icon to enter queries.

THAT'S IT!!!