How do I test a website using XAMPP?

Question

This is a fairly general query as I\'m very confused about how to do this. I want to use the apache server which I have downloaded as part of XAMPP in order to test the website

Answer 1

Just edit the httpd-vhost-conf scroll to the bottom and on the last example/demo for creating a virtual host, remove the hash-tags for DocumentRoot and ServerName. You may have hash-tags just before the and

After DocumentRoot, just add the path to your web-docs ... and add your domain-name after ServerNmane

    ##ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host2.example.com
    DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs/www"
    ServerName example.com
    ##ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-error.log"
    ##CustomLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-access.log" common

Be sure to create the www folder under htdocs. You do not have to name the folder www but I did just to be simple about it. Be sure to restart Apache and bang! you can now store files in the newly created directory. To test things out just create a simple index.html or index.php file and place in the www folder, then go to your browser and test it out localhost/ ... Note: if your server is serving php files over html then remember to add localhost/index.html if the html file is the one you choose to use for this test.

Something I should add, in order to still have access to the xampp homepage then you will need to create another VirtualHost. To do this just add

    ##ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host2.example.com
    DocumentRoot "C:/xampp/htdocs"
    ServerName htdocs.example.com
    ##ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-error.log"
    ##CustomLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-access.log" common

underneath the last VirtualHost that you created. Next make the necessary changes to your host file and restart Apache. Now go to your browser and visit htdocs.example.com and your all set.