XAMPP Configuration for WordPress

XAMPP is not meant for developers in a development environment not production use. XAMPP is configured to be as open as possible and in a production environment it could be problematic. In this lesson we will look at some configuration options to make XAMPP more secure. We will also create an empty database which will be required later for the WordPress software install.

Use the buttons below to navigate through the lesson

In a web browser type localhost, Click PHPinfo. Make a note of the loaded configuration file in case you need to make any changes to the php file, in the future. Select Security. Click http://localhost/security/xamppsecurity.php  We need to assign a password for MYSQL to secure all database access. Fill in password and repeat then click Password changing. Password change was successful. We now need to assign a user and password for the Xampp directory and click Make safe the XAMPP directory. The XAMPP directory is now protected.

PHPMYADMIN

Now we have secured both the XAMPP folder and assigned a password for MYSQL database access. We will now use phpMyAdmin to create a new blank database for the WordPress install, this database is considered to be blank because we will not be creating any tables inside this database. All the tables and initial data will be created automatically by the installer.

In a web browser type localhost, Type the username and password. Click OK. Click phpMyAdmin. Type the username and password. Click Go. Click Databases.  In the Create new database box type WordPress, you can give this database any name just remember the name for the later WordPress install. Click Create. Database has been created.

Now logout. For security never leave PHPMYADMIN logged in as anyone can access your databases.

XAMPP Folder

We will now look at the actual XAMPP folder, in this folder are the sub folders for the XAMPP install. These include the Apache folder for the server configuration, if for example during the XAMPP setup Apache server cannot started due to port 80 being used, you can specify a different port for Apache to run on. For example we could attach port 8080 to Apache, if you do change the default port (80), you would need to specify that port when opening the page in a web browser example
http://localhost:8080
http://localhost:8080/wordpress
Also in the XAMPP folder is the htdocs folder which is the default home folder for the Apache server, we will later place our downloaded WordPress files in this folder.

Open the XAMPP folder. Open the Apache folder. Open the conf folder. Double click httpd.conf. Select select a program from a list of installed programs and click OK. Select Notepad and click OK. Scroll down to the Listen entries. File shows Apache is listening for requests on it’s default port 80. If you need to alter this port edit the port number. Remember to do file and save and restart Apache server if it is running, you can do this from the XAMPP control panel.

Open the htdocs folder. This is the home folder for Apache, where we will place the WordPress folder in the next lesson.

In the next lesson we will download the WordPress software and place it in the Htdocs folder. We will then perform the installation of WordPress using the blank database created in this lesson.