WampServer

I am about to have another attempt to replicate a live site on my local machine but would like some advice on the issue that has stopped me every time so far!!

I have a lot of php file path variables/URL variables in a config file which generally take the form of

$siteroot = "/homepages/this-server/www/folder/site";
$urlroot = "[www.mysite.com"];;

These then get used in other variables so the backend could be

$backend = $siteroot."/backend";
$urlbackend = $urlroot."/backend";


This may or may not be bad practice but I found it easier to maintain folder changes in site wide links. The trouble is that the last couple of times I have tried WAMP, I could not replicate this.

If I was to set up a test site at

K://sites/this_site

and access it through

localhost/this_site

how would I set-up the above root variables to work as they do in live?

Any suggestions or pointers would be great fully received.

Thanks in advance

Steve

Steve,

Ok, yup, very bad practice, but....

If you want to be able to copy the live site to your PC and run it without changes, you will have to duplicate the directory levels that exist on your live environment.

To do this I think you will have to create a Virtual Host, and that will allow you to duplicate the folder structure.

So you will have to create, for example
c:/homepages/this-server/www/folder/site

And then create the virtual host pointing to C:/homepages/this-server/www/folder/site


Here is a tutorial on creating VHOST's, you will have to modify it so accomodate your specific requirements.





HowTo: Create Virtual Hosts in WAMP

BEFORE DOING ANY OF THIS PLEASE ENSURE APACHE AND MYSQL ARE WORKING PROPERLY FIRST!!!

1. Create a new folder outside the wamp directory structure.
for example

C:\websites

but this can be on any disk drive visible to the PC running wamp


2. Create a subfolder in c:\websites for each site you want to create.
for example:

C:\websites\site1
C:\websites\site2

3. Edit the file C:\wamp\bin\apache\apachex.y.z\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf
where x,y and z are the version numbers of apache that you actually have installed.

NOTE: If you are switching between 2 or more versions of apache this will have to be done to all your versions of apache in turn.

SUGGESTION: I like to use the format sitename.dev to make it obvious to me that I am dealing with my localhost development copy of a site, you may prefer another notation, thats ok, the word dev has no actual defined meaning in this case, its just my way of naming my development versions of a live site.

NOTE: Remove ot better still comment out ( using the # in column 1 ) the lines that already exists in this file. They are just examples.

example contents:

	#
	# Use name-based virtual hosting.
	#
	NameVirtualHost *:80

	## must be first so the the wamp menu page loads when you use just localhost as the domain name
	<VirtualHost *:80>
    	DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/www"
    	ServerName localhost
    	ServerAlias localhost
    	<Directory  "C:/wamp/www">
			Order Deny,Allow
    		Deny from all
    		Allow from 127.0.0.1
			# You would never want a remote user to see this wamp config page.
		</Directory>
	</VirtualHost>


	<VirtualHost *:80>
	    DocumentRoot "C:/websites/site1"
	    ServerName site1.dev
	    ServerAlias www.site1.dev
	    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
	    <Directory "C:/websites/www/site1">
			AllowOverride All
			Order Deny,Allow
			Deny from all
			Allow from 127.0.0.1
		    #If you want to allow access from your internal network
		    # For specific ip addresses add one line per ip address
		    #Allow from 192.168.0.100
	    	# For every ip in the subnet, just use the first 3 numbers of the subnet
	    	#Allow from 192.168.0
	    	# If you want to allow access to everyone
	    	#Allow from all
		</Directory>
	</VirtualHost>

Add as many <VirtualHost> as you require so each of your sites have one, changing the DocumentRoot, ServerName and any other of the parameters as appropriate.
This also allows you to make SITE SPECIFIC changes to the configuration.

NOTE: This will make the wamp manager "Put Online" function no longer have any effect on these new vhost'ed sites as the security for each one is now part of the vhost definition, so leave WAMP, OFFLINE.
If you want to put one or more sites online you will have to change the Allow commands MANUALLY in the httpd-vhosts.conf file.

To check your subnet do the following:
Launch a command window, and run

    >ipconfig

Look for the line "Default Gateway" in the output and use the third number in your Allow commands.


4. Edit your httpd.conf file and search for these lines, they are near the bottom of the file.
# Virtual hosts
#Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Remove the '#' comment character on this line to Include your newly changed vhosts, this will cause apache to register their existance.
eg

# Virtual hosts
Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

6. While still editing your httpd.conf file search for

	#   onlineoffline tag - don't remove
	    Order Deny,Allow
	    Deny from all
	    Allow from 127.0.0.1

	</Directory>

DO NOT CHANGE THESE LINES!

Add the following after the <\Directory> tag to secure your new C:\websites folder.

<Directory "C:/websites/">
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Directory>

This is to set security on your new directory structure so that access to these new sites is only allowed from 127.0.0.1 (localhost) unless amended from within a specific VHOST.
P.S. Your internal network will probably be something like 192.168.x.y, check your system first!


7. Now in order for your browser to know how to get to these new domain names i.e. site1.dev and site2.dev, we need to tell windows what IP address they are located on. There is a file called HOSTS that is a hangover from the days before Domain Name Servers (DNS) were invented. It is a way of giving nice easy rememberable names to IP address's, which of course is what DNS Servers do for us all now.

Edit your HOSTS file, this can be found in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc , the file does not have an extension.
Windows protects this file so you must be an Administrator to be allowed to save changes to this file.

If you are using VISTA or Windows7/8 you may think you are an Administrator BUT YOU ARE NOT!!!!
So to edit this file you must launch your editor, or Notepad in a specific way to gain Administrator rights. To do this find your editors icon and launch it using the following key strokes:
Shift + Right Click over its icon, this will display a menu, click the item "Run as Administrator", and click "Allow" on the challenge dialog that will appear.

Now you are ready to edit the hosts file so navigate your editor to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Add the following lines to this file

   127.0.0.1   site1.dev
   127.0.0.1   site2.dev

NOTE: You will need to add one line in this file for each of your new virtual hosts.


8. In order for Apache to pick up these changes you must bounce ( stop and restart ) apache.
Do this by: Wamp manager -> Apache -> Service -> Restart Service


You should now be able to use the address site1.dev in your browser to get to your new sites.
Copy your sites code into the "C:/websites/xxxx" folder if you already have a site coded or,
place a quick and simple index.php file into the "c:\websites\xxxx" folder to proove it all works.

example:

   <!DOCTYPE html>
   <html lang="en-US">
   <head>
   <meta charset="UTF-8">
   <title>SITE1</title>
   </head>
   <body>
   <?php
        echo '<div style="background-color:red;color;white;text-align:center;font-size:18px">HELLO FROM Site1</div>';
   ?>
   </body>
   </html>

TROUBLE SHOOTING:
If you have used the new domain name ( site1.dev ) and it has not found the site.
a. Check the changes to the hosts file.
b. Restart the "DNS Service" that runs in windows. This caches all doman names that you use in a browser so that the browser does not have to query a DNS Server each time you re-use a domain name. This may have cached your failed attempt but a restart is easy and should solve the problem and is quicker that re-booting windows, which should also work.
To do this launch a command window as an Administrator ( Shift + Left Click over the command window icon ) and run these 2 commands.

>net stop "DNS Client"
>net start "DNS Client"
Note: The quotes are required as there is a space in the services name.

Thanks guys. That's a lot to take in!

Realistically, I won't get a chance to try any of this before the weekend but will report back once done.

It does look that it might be easier to just hard code any links/includes in each page rather than use php variables.
Steve