Technical ConfusionBecause Technology Is Confusing

I’ve been meaning to install XAMPP for Windows for a long time and today was the day.

I’ve installed Apache, PHP and Mysql separately before, but never XAMPP. I thought it was going to be a huge job, boy was I wrong.

The install took all of five minutes. This application installs the Apache webserver, PHP, Perl and Mysql. All at once. I haven’t tested the Perl yet, but PHP is working just fine. This post has been written in a copy of Wordpress that I installed.

XAMPP Install

The XAMPP install goes like any Windows program, just make sure you download the installer (the zip file should have the word installer right in the filename.) Double click the .exe file, it will ask you where you want to install it, choose the default. My copy is installed on XP Pro.

Make sure you have easy access to the XAMPP Control Panel. This is important.

Once you have XAMPP installed, go to the XAMPP Control Panel.

Click Service.

Click Run XAMPP Control Panel as service.

Check at the very least Apache and Mysql. The other 2 are the Filezilla FTP server and a mail server. You really don’t need them.

Go to the browser of your choice and type in: http://localhost/ This will bring up some of the documentation.

That’s it. It’s so easy a caveman can do it! Seriously!

Any files you are going to use, or want to view in a browser, should go in the C:\xampp\htdocs folder. This can be changed, if you want to tackle the Apache configuration file: httpd.conf.

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Internet Explorer’s Effect on Programs

I discovered something new the other day that I was never aware of.

The effect of IE on certain programs I have installed.

I have IE7 installed on my computer. I don’t use it except for my own sites. I use Mozilla for my browser of choice. It hasn’t been working, but really, I wasn’t broken hearted over it - I do have another computer that I can check my sites on with IE if need be.

At some point, I have no idea when, I must have been playing around with the proxy option of Internet Options. Played around with it entered stuff and promptly forgot it and moved on to something else. (I’ve been sick for several weeks so this doesn’t really surprise me that I forgot.)

I’ve noticed great difficulty in trying to get say Windows updates. Can’t get em without the computer crashing. I use a couple of programs that display ads. I noticed one day that the ads weren’t working. It didn’t really bother me because the one program still worked, for what I needed it to do. The other one phones home, and it phones to the Planet datacenter who recently had a fire and I knew the maker of this software was hosted on their servers and was one of those affected, so I didn’t think anything of it.

But I really needed to check a client’s site in IE and this started me on the journey to finally figure out why IE wouldn’t work for me.

First, I took the easy way out and reinstalled IE7. No luck.

Then I went in and checked out the various security settings, changing them to the lowest security and privacy levels. No luck.

Checked the connection settings. I haven’t used the connection settings in years thru internet options, I’ve been setting up my internet connection thru My Network settings for years - and the connection setting never shows in Internet Options. (The only reason I go into Internet Options is to set my defaults to Mozilla products.) Nothing there.

Checked my lan settings. Lo and behold, plain as day, proxy server is checked, with an ip I was messing with.

Hmm.

Uncheck the proxy setting, close IE and open IE and bam! My sites are coming up. My programs are working.

Learn something new every day.