I thought WAMPserver was, like, for idiots. I feel like an idiot so why doesn't it work?

July 21, 2009 11:49 AM

I am following a tutorial on how to install WAMPserver and Wordpress on my Windows machine to kickstart my learning of CM systems and PHP. A crucial component won't install and I don't know nuthin' about how to fix the problem.

I found This tutorial on installing and configuring WAMPserver, which is ideal for a dunderhead like myself who can barely compute. When I get to the part where they tell you to go to SQLitemanager, I realized that it wasn't in my WAMPserver menu. I have unistalled and reinstalled twice and it doesn't show up. I have tried to duplicate their instructions using a SQLite Manager plugin for Firefox but it isn't working. I have searched for evidence of other people having the same problem but came up empty-handed. I am at a loss to find a solution. Am I looking for the answers in the wrong places? This is being installed on a machine without windows server software.

posted by Foam Pants to Technology (6 answers total)

My internet connection is kinda borked, so I am not really able to help you properly, but I'll try to help anyway. There are several WAMP Stacks around e.g. from bitami. Most of them use MySQL and not the slimmer SQLite. That's also why it's phpmyadmin and not phpsqliteadmin. So if you can get your wamp stack to start MySQL and then use phpmyadmin with this mysql database and use the wordpress connection settings with mysql. Everything should work as it's supposed to.

You see you just need a database sever running. You connect with phpmyadmin to that database server and create the database tables, then you configure your application (wordpress) to use that database giving it the username and password and the address (localhost) of your database server.

(I can't really look at the tutorial and a lot of webpages at the moment, so excuse my terse answer.)
posted by mmkhd at 12:16 PM on July 21, 2009

Disable all virus protection. Obviously you want to do that without being connected to the internet.
posted by JJ86 at 1:06 PM on July 21, 2009

Best answer: If you don't come up with a solution for WAMPserver, you can try XAMPP instead. In my experience, it's the easiest WAMP stack to deal with.
posted by JaredSeth at 1:42 PM on July 21, 2009

I'm also a relative newbie to PHP (and computer programming in general), and I used the tutorials here to install and configure. It's very detailed, and you can watch the video go through everything step-by-step, so it seems pretty foolproof.
posted by Fifi Firefox at 2:57 PM on July 21, 2009

I second Xampp, for my Local install of Wordpress I used Xampp and these instructions here.
It was painless.
Enjoy
posted by blink_left at 10:04 PM on July 22, 2009

Response by poster: I was able to get XAMPP installed on my local machine and to get a Wordpress blog going. They also seem to have good FAQs and instructions on making it secure. I am also looking into Fifi Firefox's suggestion to learn more about what is going on behind the scenes. Thanks for all suggestions, especially TomMelee's email!
posted by Foam Pants at 1:53 PM on July 24, 2009