Setting up WordPress site on WAMP by independently installing its components on Windows Systems

When you download and install a WAMP server on Windows you get all of its components

• Apache Tomcat Server which acts as Web Server service
• MySQL which acts as backend database
• Php which acts as the development programming language

  It’s a single installer that takes care of all of these components installation. Configuring WAMP is very straight forward as detailed in Instaling WordPress on WAMP.

However, the downside with WAMP is, you get a pre-defined version of the components bundled together.  What if there is a newer version of Php which you’d like to have setup? Or if you’d like to use IIS instead of tomcat? In cases like those you need to install those components manually and then integrate to make the setup work.

Below are the steps involved should you ever need to setup the WordPress by manually installing the WAMP components and served by IIS on Windows systems:

• Download the sources of WordPress, MySQL and Php latest stable versions

• WordPress .Zip file from http://wordpress.org/download/ 
• MySQL (Community Server Edition) for Windows MSI Installer from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/. 

• Note: MySQL Installer is 32 bit, but will install both 32 bit and 64 bit binaries.

PHP For Windows Non-Thread Safety .Zip file from http://windows.php.net/download/

• Note: If you are using PHP as FastCGI with IIS you should use the Non-Thread Safe (NTS) versions of PHP

Enabled IIS from Windows Features along with

• ISAPI Extensions and Filters,
• Default Document, 
• Static Content

Create a new web site say www.mywordpressblog.com in IIS (say its path located to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mywordpressblog) and verify that IIS site is loading fine.

In the newly created Application Pool, enabled support for 32-bit applications

Install MySQL Server along with MySQL Workbench

Launch MySQL Workbench and connect to the existing instance and Under Schemas, create a new schema (say wordpressdb) that is going to hold your WordPress database

Extract Php and Copy to a folder say C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Php

Make a copy of “…\php\php.ini-production” and rename it as “…\php\php.ini”

Now extract the WordPress zip file and copy over the contents to the new site folder (i.e., C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mywordpressblog)

Configure index.php as the Default document for the site www.mywordpressblog.com 

Install IIS extension named PHP Manager and let it configure all of the PHP options. Including

• enabling PHP Extensions for MySQL named php_mysql.dll and php_mysqli.dll
• Module Mapping for Php like below which uses FastCgiModule
•  

You can alternatively copy over a php.ini from a working system or manually update the file entries appropriately if you are an advanced Php user

Restart the IIS site and recycle the respective Application pool as well

Now launch the site and you’ll see the WordPress installer page loading on your new site

Now follow the WordPress install instructions. At the Database details page, provide the newly created Schema (i.e., wordpressdb)

Yay, you’ll now have a successful install of WordPress site with all of its components manually installed, configured and integrated to serve your WordPress site.

 

 

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