Install and setup Apache + MySQL + PHP on Windows

Download

You can download the required installer via links given below:

• Apache for Windows: https://www.apachelounge.com/download/
• PHP 7 for Windows (select Thread Safe): https://windows.php.net/download/
• MariaDB for Windows: https://downloads.mariadb.org/
• FakeSMTP (needed for Windows) http://nilhcem.com/FakeSMTP/download.html

MariaDB

• Firstly install MariaDB server
• If you needed you can change port during installation process. If you changed it then you improve you must connection string in PHP.

Apache 2.4 server

Install the latest C++ Redistributable Visual Studio 2017: https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=48145

• Unzip downloaded Apache archive to the C:\Apache24\ (or somewhere else) directory.

• After unzipping, go to the folder C:\Apache24\conf\ and open the httpd.conf file by any text editor.

• In this file change this line
  

  # ServerName www.example.com:80
  

  withhttpd.conf
  

  ServerName localhost
  

• Find all occurrences of AllowOverride None
  and change them to AllowOverride All

• Enable mod_rewrite by uncomment following line
  #LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so

Register Apache service

• open console and go to Apache directory cd Apache24/bin
• then type following command httpd -k install
• now you can see Apache service in Services

Some PRO tips

Change your DocumentRoot

• You can change default directory where Apache will be looking for websites

DocumentRoot "L:/"
<Directory "L:/">
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Add custom virtual hosts w/ local domains

• You can also create virtual host with custom local domain for each your projects. Append following to httpd.conf file (for each project):

<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>
    ServerAdmin [e-mail]
    DocumentRoot "L:/MyProject"
    ServerName www.myproject.loc
    ServerAlias myproject.loc
    ServerAlias www.myproject.lc
    ServerAlias myproject.lc
    ErrorLog "logs/myproject.log"
</VirtualHost>

• Then you must edit the hosts file, in Windows is located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc. In this file append following line
  • 127.0.0.1 www.myproject.loc myproject.loc www.myproject.lc myproject.lc

Change Apache default port

• You can change default port where Apache server will be listen
  • just change Listen 80 to e.g. Listen 8008
  • and restart service
• From now you see your website on http://localhost:8008/

PHP

• Unzip downloaded PHP archive to the C:\php7\ (or somewhere else) directory.
• Rename or copy php-ini-development.ini to php.ini
• Open php.ini and edit:
  • Find section Dynamic Extensions and uncomment extension which you want to load, here is listing good base of enabled extensions: bz2, curl, fileinfo, intl, imap, mbstring, mysqli, openssl, pdo_mysql, pdo_sqlite, sqlite3, xsl
  • Then change SMTP port to smtp_port = 2525

• Add PHP in system environment variable.

  • in cmd type setx path "%PATH%, C:\php7" /M

• Open Apache configuration file (c:\Apache24\conf\httpd.conf) again

  • and append following lines:

PHPIniDir "C:/PHP7"
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php
LoadModule php7_module "C:/PHP7/php7apache2_4.dll"

• Then change DirectoryIndex from index.html to:

<IfModule dir_module>
    DirectoryIndex index.php
</IfModule>

FakeSMTP

• FakeSMTP is Java application which simulate SMTP server for local developing on Windows.
• You can start it with following command: start java -jar C:\sw\faceSMTP\fakeSMTP-2.0.jar --start-server --background --port 2525 --bind-address 127.0.0.1 --output-dir L:\_emails
• Or you can create command file (e.g.: fakesmpt.cmd) with following content:

@echo off
start java -jar C:\sw\faceSMTP\fakeSMTP-2.0.jar --start-server --background --port 2525 --bind-address 127.0.0.1 --output-dir L:\_emails
exit

Comments

[Jeremy Ikwuje]

Thanks, Antonin, I love the domain aspect with apache.

[UPDATE]
Try to check if PHP is installed successfully:

php -v

and you'll get the current version of PHP.

PHP 7.4.5 (cli) (built: Apr 14 2020 16:17:34) ( ZTS Visual C++ 2017 x64 )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies

However, you might get extension errors:

PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library 'bz2' (tried: C:\php\e
xt\bz2 (The specified module could not be found.), C:\php\ext\php_bz2.dll (The s
pecified module could not be found.)) in Unknown on line 0

This is due to fail extension_dir path. To fix this, comment out the extension_dir for windows inside php.ini file.

; On windows:
extension_dir = "ext"

You can CTRL F to find extension_dir line.

[Jonathan]

Trying to install php8, this needs to be changed:
LoadModule php7_module "{path to php 8}"

To:
LoadModule php_module "{path to php 8}"

[kijato]

Tell me about more from libmysql.dll...

In my opinion you must:
copy dll to the Apache bin directory
or
add to path of dll to the PATH
or
add a "LoadModule /libmysql.dll" row to the httpd.conf
else the Apache cannot find the neccessary dll and throw an error.