These are the simplest instructions available. I found this after googling around for how to fix this and how to configure that and the occasional “WTF was that?! how do I fix that??“.

  1. Go here.
  2. Download the installer.
  3. Wait….
  4. Run the installer.
  5. Click OK about 4 or 5 times.
  6. Walk away.
  7. Make a sandwich, drink a beer…eat your sandwich. This step is crucial.
  8. Come back.
  9. Marvel in how simple that was and wonder if you will ever attempt to install all that stuff yourself again.
  10. Done.

Now wasn’t that simple?!

All kidding aside, I spent the better part of a few days trying to get all of the cofiguration files tweaked and then get the Apache/PHP/MySQL stuff running locally so that I could view my websites without FTPing them to the server and debugging the errors from there. A friend of mine directed me to this site and I’ve since installed the apps on two machines. XAMPP takes all of the guess-work out of getting these services installed on your PC.