How To Install Joomla On Your Windows Machine XP Vista WAMP and XAMPP

Here are the steps you need to install Joomla locally on your Windows Machine. The following have been tested using Vista/XP:

XAMPP - Installs Apache server on your local machine alongside options for SQL, FTP and Mail

WAMP - Is the same as XAMPP, but just has more features.

What you'll need:

* Joomla 1.0.x (meaning latest version in 1.0 series)
* Wamp5 grab it from http://ping.fm/7jvdV
*


Steps:

* Install Wamp
* unzip joomla into your wamp's www folder (eg C:\wamp\www\joomla
* start wamp
* open a browser window and go to http://localhost/joomla
* follow the on screen prompts to install joomla


On screen prompts and what to enter in the boxes

* Host Name = localhost
* MySQL User Name = root
* MySQL Password = blank (don't put anything in this box)
* MySQL Database Name = anyhting you like (eg joomladb)
* MySQL Table Prefix = jos_ (this is set as default but you can change it)
* Make sure that install sample data is ticked
* Click "next"


step 2:

* Site name = your site name


step 3:

* VERY IMPORTANT!! Change the admin password to something memorable (as this is only for testing locally I'd suggest setting the password to admin or password or similar


step 4:

* Remove or rename BOTH of the following: INSTALL.PHP and the installation folder (eg C:\wamp\www\joomla\installation\)


step 5:

* in your browser window click on either the "view site" button or the "Administration" button


Voila!! you now have a local copy of Joomla for testing purposes

To download and install XAMPP:
1. Download the xampplite-win32-1.5.5.zip file from the website
http://ping.fm/O30oI and extract it on the
local drive. The directory xampplite is created.

2. Open the setup_xampp.bat file from the xampplite directory. XAMPP makes no entries in the Windows Registry and sets no system variables:

3. Now you can start the server. PHP starts automatically as a module. Open [Drive]:\xampplite\xampp_start.exe. A command-prompt window opens, which indicates that Apache has started.

4. Open your Internet browser and enter http://127.0.0.1/ or
http://localhost/. You should now see the XAMPP start page. Click
on the English link

The document directory of your website is [Drive]:\xampplite\htdocs. This directory contains all of the pages that are accessible by a remote computer on the Internet. Read the included readme_en.txt file for additional information about the necessary passwords.
To uninstall the package, close all current servers and simply delete the
xampplite directory.
Or, if you're lazy or these steps don't work for you, AND you have $10.00 to work with, try JSAS, which has WAMP configured with JOOMLA preinstalled.