
So, you have installed XAMPP on windows, [changed its server port][1] to a different number other than 80 and [changed the MySQL *root* password][2] to a more secure one. Now its the time to create some HTML files that will be served by XAMPP server.

[1]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/how-to-change-xampp-server-port "How to change XAMPP server port?"
[2]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/how-to-change-the-root-password-for-mysql-in-xampp "How to change the 'Ëœroot' password for MySQL in XAMPP?"

By default, XAMPP serves any file that is located under the directory *[xampp\_installation\_folder]/htdocs, * which means that you have to copy all your HTML/PHP files inside this directory. But what if you maintain a different folder for all your projects files and you want XAMPP to serve them too along with _htdocs_?

Lets make XAMPP to do this.

1.  Open the file *[xamp\_installation\_folder]/apache/conf/httpd.conf* in any text editor.
2.  Copy below lines after the _htdocs _ element after changing the directory to your own folder.

            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes ExecCGI
            AllowOverride All
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all

3.  Then search for this string: . Inside that element, add a new alias as followed:
    Alias /yoursite/ "C:/path/to/your/folder/yoursite/"

4.  Save the file and restart the XAMPP server.

After this, if you have a website named 'Ëœyoursite' inside the folder *'Ëœc:/path/to/your/folder'* you can access it directly by using the URL: _http://localhost:8080/yoursite/ _(assuming you have [changed XAMPP port][3] to 8080).

[3]: https://veerasundar.com/blog/how-to-change-xampp-server-port "Change XAMPP server port"


Making XAMPP to serve any directory outside htdocs


Recently I got hold of an empty Rackspace server in which we have installed Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal version. My next step was to setup the LAMP stack in that server to run our PHP site.

First I tried to install XAMPP for Linux. But unfortunately, it failed because XAMPP only supports 32 bit operating system and ours was 64. I didn't want to spend much time on fixing that issue, so I moved to setup the LAMP stack by other means.

Here's what I did (after googling/referring a lot):

## 1.Install lamp-server

1.  **sudo apt-get install tasksel **[installs the tasksel that helps you to install multiple packages as a single task]
2.  **sudo tasksel install lamp-server **[it will install the lamp stack in location */etc/*]
3.  *http://yourdomain.com *should work now.

## 2. Configure PHP Curl module

1.  **sudo apt-get install php5-curl **[downloads and installs curl module]
2.  **sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart** [restarts server for the changes to take effect]

## 3. Install phpmyadmin

1.  **sudo apt-get update **[updates the packages repository. When I first tried to install phpmyadmin without updating, it complained that phpmyadmin isn't found.]
2.  **sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin **[will trigger a installation wizard]
3.  Choose **apache2 **for the **server configuration** and choose **no **for **database configuration **(since we have already installed database).
4.  **sudo cp /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf /etc/apache2/conf.d **[copies the server configuration so that it is accessible via web]
5.  **sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart**
6.  *http://yourdomain.com/phpmyadmin* should work now.

That's it. Now our server is ready for serving the traffic. Place your website files under **/var/www/ **which will be served to the world.


#apache (2)