Windows-specific guidelines

In this section you will learn how to set up a local test site on your Windows box. You need to do two things on your computer:

• Install the software that Drupal needs in order to run
• Install Drupal itself

You can do these each individually, or you can use an installer that includes Drupal.

Individually

First you'll install the software Drupal needs. Several packages exist which install Apache, PHP, MySQL and some other useful components in one easy download. These include the following:

• ApacheFriends XAMPP
• WampServer 2
• Uniform Server
• Web.Developer Suite (commercial product)

A comparison of many packages can be found at Wikipedia.

Then you can follow the instructions for the Basic installation

Notes

Drupal 6.14 and 7 are compatible PHP 5.2 and 5.3
See this page, http://drupal.org/requirements
PHP 5.2 or higher will be a requirement for Drupal 7.

WampServer note:
There are 2 ways to get version PHP 5.2.9-2 for Wamp or Wampserver2.
• Install the newest WAMP2. Then visit the WAMP addons PHP Versions page, download the PHP version(s) you need or want(PHP 5.2.9-2) and install them. Then you can select the version to run from the WAMP UI by left clicking the Icon > PHP > Version and check mark the one you want. If you change it, restart the server and you will be fine.
• Install an older version of Wampserver. You can find older versions of WAMP5 and WAMPSERVER2 on this page http://sourceforge.net/projects/wampserver/files/ . Just click on WAMP5 or WAMPSERVER2 for the complete file listings.

See more information about different setups in the pages listed below. Some are easy installs with a few clicks, and some are more difficult options where each component (Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc) is installed manually.

Installers that include Drupal

If you want to install it all at once -

• BitNami Drupal Stack
• SpikeWAMP

Don't know which to choose?

If you are bewildered by all these options, just want some nice easy instructions to follow, go and have a look at Simple install of Drupal on XAMPP. Trying out Drupal on your Windows machine couldn't be easier.