During your career as a Coder, you will find, at some point, a need to set up and run a Devserver on your local computer. Working locally is a great way to develop your code before deploying it on a Production Server.
This software has several additional applications you can install to ensure the Local Environment is as close to or an exact duplicate of the Production Environment.
As of this writing, this software will install the following on your system:
EasyPHP Devserver 17.0
PHP 7.x / 5.5.x / 5.4.x / 5.3.x, Apache, Nginx, MySQL, PhpMyAdmin, Xdebug + modules + components
Devserver Features
- Ready-to-use!
- Portable. You can use it on your local hard drive, a USB, or an external hard drive.
- Fully configurable software.
- Start, stop, and restart servers available.
- Easy access to files and folders.
- Configuration files, error log files, and more
- Modular. You can add additional applications to customize the environment, such as Python.
- Comes with PHP up and running.
Preparation
Before moving forward, you must ensure you have the following available/installed on your system.
- Windows 7/8/10/11
- Available Hard Disk Space / USB Space: 430 MB
- Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 x86 or x64
- Python 3.x
Download the Software
The first step is to navigate to EasyPHP Devserver and click the download button indicated below for Windows 7/8/10 or 11.
💡Note: The Finxter Academy has tested and confirmed that the EasyPHP Devserver works in a Windows 11 environment.
Next, the Save-As dialog box displays. Select the location to save the installation file. For this example, the Desktop was selected. Click the Save button to complete the download and move forward.
If successful, the installation file is now visible on the Desktop (or a different selected location).
Start the Installation Process
Double-click the Easy PHP Devserver installation icon on the Desktop (or a different selected location) to start the installation process.
Allow App to Make Changes Dialog Box
The first dialog box you will see prompts you to allow this app (Easy PHP Devserver) to make changes to your device. Click the Yes button to confirm and move forward.
Select Setup Language Dialog Box
From the Select Setup Language dialog box, click the dropdown box and select the appropriate language. Then, click the OK button to confirm the selection and move forward.
Select Destination Location Dialog Box
From the Select Destination Location dialog box, you can either click the Browse button to select a new location or ignore and leave the default location as-is. Then, click the Next button to confirm the selection and move forward.
💡Note: The default location, for this example, was left as-is.
Select Additional Tasks Dialog Box
From the Select Additional Tasks dialog box, ensure the checkbox contains a checkmark if you want a Desktop icon created. Then, click the Next button to confirm the selection and move forward.
For this example, the Desktop icon was created.
Ready to Install Dialog Box
From the Ready to Install dialog box, click the Install button and wait for the process to complete the installation.
Installation Completion Dialog Box
From this dialog box, you can either leave the checkmark in the checkbox to launch the Easy PHP Devserver immediately or uncheck it to start it later.
For this example, uncheck this checkbox, and let’s learn how to start the servers manually. Finally, click the Finish button to complete the installation.
If successful, an Easy PHP Devserver icon now resides on the Desktop.
Starting the Devserver
Navigate to the Taskbar and right-mouse-click over the EasyPHP Devserver icon to display a pop-up similar to below. Next, click the Devserver 17 menu item to start the server.
💡Note: Alternatively, click the Easy PHP Devserver Taskbar icon to start the server.
Now, to the far right on the Taskbar is a smaller icon similar to the Easy PHP Devserver icon. Right-mouse-click over this icon to display a pop-up menu.
If you cannot locate this icon, you may need to click the up arrow on the Taskbar, as shown below.
From the pop-up menu, you have a few options to select from:
- Open Dashboard: This opens a web page and displays everything you need to manage the EasyPHP Devserver.
- Servers: This allows you to start/stop/restart one or all of the servers: the HTTP Server or Database Server.
- Support: Where you can get help for any issues that may occur.
- Tools: For further customizing or, if needed, kill any processes.
- Exit: Used to stop the servers and exit the Easy PHP Devserver.
For this article, select Open Dashboard.
💡Note: We recommend stopping the servers before shutting down the computer.
The Dashboard
Below is an image snippet of a few features available in the Dashboard. Our developers usually have their Dashboard available but minimized for easy access during development.
The following article will focus on setting up the EasyPHP Dashboard.
Summary
In this article, you learned what the Easy PHP Devserver can do to enhance your Local Environment and how to successfully install this on your system.
The accompanying article, Setup the EasyPHP Dashboard, will delve into navigating and customizing the EasyPHP Dashboard.
We look forward to seeing you in the following article!
Programmer Humor
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world: those who know binary and those who don’t.
👩🧔♂️
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There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand trinary, those who don’t, and those who mistake it for binary.
👩🧔♂️👱♀️