Windows Part 6
Extra (needed if you want to have Apache
up and running without having to manually start it up)
1.) I only placed these steps here because these steps simply doesn’t belong in the Installing PHP
section and we cannot add these steps into the Installing Apache
section as we have just finished configuring our php.ini
file and our PHP
installation. The neat thing about Linux
is that it starts mostly every service up without needing to manually start up those service. In Windows
however, if you want Apache
to start up when you turn on your computer, you’ll need to create a short cut and add that into your Startup
directory. So the first thing you want to do is again, open up File Explorer
and browse to C:/dev/progs/Apache/bin
or C:/ Drive
> dev
> progs
> Apache
> bin
.
2.) Once you are there, right-click on ApacheMonitor
and from the context menu, click on Create shortcut
. This will create a shortcut to the ApacheMonitor
executable file. Basically, when your computer starts up and all of the startup programs are started up, this shortcut will point to the ApacheMonitor
and then Windows
will start up the ApacheMonitor
executable file.
3.) What I’d like to do is rename ApacheMonitor - Shortcut
to just ApacheMonitor
, but you can leave it as is if you’d like. It’s just a matter of preference.
4.) Once you have that all sorted out, click on the Start
button at the bottom left corner of your Windows 10
. Once the Start
menu expands and you see the small left sidebar again, scroll way down to Windows System
. Then click and open Run
.
5.) Once Run
is opened, where it says Open:
, type in the text field shell:startup
. This should open the Startup
directory.
6.) The Startup
directory should be empty and have nothing in there. If it there are things in there, don’t worry about it. Now, what you should do is line both the Apache
directory and the Startup
directory next to one another. Drag and drop the ApacheMonitor
shortcut. If you renamed the ApacheMonitor
shortcut to just ApacheMonitor
, you can tell the difference between the actual ApacheMonitor
and ApacheMonitor
shortcut. The shortcut has a little blue icon that’s pointing up and it’s within a little white box. That icon represents shortcuts in Windows
. You can interpret this as “A reference to the actual program”. When you drag and drop the shortcut, it should NOT create a new copy. It should have moved the shortcut to the Startup
directory leaving no ApacheMonitor
shortcut in the Apache
directory.
7.) Once the ApacheMonitor
shortcut is inside the Shortcut
directory, click and open the ApacheMonitor
shortcut. This will prompt you a security warning. Simply, it’s just the default Windows
warning dialog box. In the left bottom corner of the dialog box, it says Always ask before opening this file
. Unless you are sure and are willing to allow the ApacheMonitor
to be opened without permission, I suggest not unchecking the checkbox. However, if you don’t uncheck the checkbox, the Apache
service will not start up right away if there is an error in your Apache
configuration for any reason. This dialog box may popup and ask you again or it may not even. So the Apache
service may not even run OR start up without the ApacheMonitor
. I suggest unchecking the checkbox to ensure that the Apache
service does indeed start up when Windows
gets booted. But it’s up to you if you want to open it or not. These files are safe and the Apache Lounge
website is linked to by the official PHP
team. So I would highly doubt that the official PHP
team would link to you to any malicious website that they don’t deem unsafe for their users. Once you are done deciding whether you want to allow this or not, click on Run
. The warning dialog box should disappear and the ApacheMonitor
icon should appear in your icon tray at the bottom of your task menu.
8.) During this point, we should check to make sure that the Apache
service is working and have no errors. You can check by clicking on the ApacheMonitor
icon in your icon tray. The first time you hit Run
from the above step, ApacheMonitor
should actually open up. But if you’ve opened it before, it’ll minimize and go into the icon tray just like the picture below. So right-click on the ApacheMonitor
icon if it’s already minimized. And from the context menu, click on Open Apache Monitor
.
9.) By default, the Apache
service should not be running. So you’ll have to start it up. Click on the Start
button at the right sidebar. You’ll be prompt to type in or allow the Apache
service to run. So allow it. If all works well, the little red circle at the left of Apache2.4
should turn into a green sun light. If it still remains a red circle or it prompts you a message saying that Apache
cannot run or some kind of error message for Apache
, you might want to correct that before running Apache
. To do this, just open up a Command Prompt
with administrator permissions and change the directory to C:/dev/progs/Apache/bin
and then type in httpd
. httpd
will always tell you what’s wrong with your Apache
configuration so use it well. It’s your friend.
10.) If you are NOT using Sublime Text
, you can skip this step unless your Text Editor
provides the same option. For Sublime Text
users, I usually like to have my development projects ready to be worked on. I recommend placing your development directory on the left sidebar of Sublime Text
. This allows you to navigate and pull up files at ease without having to go to File
> Open File
> .....
. It takes too much time to open your project files so I recommend doing this. To do this, just click on File
in the top menu. Then from the menu, click on Open Folder...
, browse back to C:/dev
and select the www
directory and hit the Select Folder
button. A new Sublime Text
window should appear with your development projects or subdomain directories on the left sidebar. You can minimize both Sublime Text
windows and drag and drag the files or tabs from the first Sublime Text
window onto the second Sublime Text
window. You might want to drop those files by holding onto the tabs and dropping them in the tabs view. Dragging and dropping just the filename might not work. Another way you can also do is just drag and drop the www
directory onto the left sidebar. This will do basically the same exact thing except you don’t have to drag and drop the tabs since the www
directory will be in the current Sublime Text
window.
11.) Once we are all set and have a clean development environment to work with, you can now create test files to make sure that PHP
works. To do so, we’ll create a new file. So click on File
in the menu bar at the top and from the menu, click on New File
. The new file will always be called Untitled
by default unless you are using a different Text Editor
such as Dreamweaver
. Then yours might be Untitled.html
. In the new file (Untitled
), type in
<?php
phpinfo();
Save the file to C:/dev/www/default
and name it as index.php
. We’re just basically checking to see if PHP
works and if it does work, it’ll display our PHP
information.
12.) Open up another new file using the same menu option and then type in
<?php
print('Sample');
This time, save the file to C:/dev/www/sample
and name it as index.php
. This index.php
is meant to make sure that our subdomains work correctly and that PHP
also works correctly.
13.) For this step, I’m not really doing much. I am just expanding the directories to demonstrate that there are 2 different index.php
files and they are both saved in different directories.
14.) Open up your favorite web browser and create a new tab and type into the address bar localhost.com. It should display a similar page to the first picture below.
15.) Create another new tab and type into the address bar sample.localhost.com. It should display something similar to this page. There should be nothing really except for a text that outputs Sample
. If you are getting a 404 Error
page on this subdomain, you probably forgot to change the lines that read
<Directory />
AllowOverride none
Require all denied
</Directory>
They need to be changed to
<Directory />
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
So that you can access directories within your www
directory. You’ll also want to restart your Apache
service. You can restart the Apache
service by clicking on the ApacheMonitor
icon in the icon tray and hovering over Apache2.4
and then from the secondary menu, click on Restart
. The Apache
service should restart and you can then refresh that page you are on.