Tips: Running Drupal on Windows using WAMP
I haven't actively administered Drupal on Windows, and in fact had never installed WAMP before creating Drupal Essential Training. The course includes a nine-minute "Installing WAMP and Drupal on Windows" video, but here are some additional tips I've discovered since the course was released.
[Update, 16 August 2009: See also this thread for tips, particularly this comment.]
- Increase PHP's memory settings or you might have problems backing up and restoring your Drupal site. You'll see the issue if you go to the MySQL-controlling phpMyAdmin screen (probably at http://localhost/phpMyAdmin) and click "Import": The maximum file size allowed is 2,048K. That's only 2MB, and the databases for most Drupal sites are much larger than that. (The example site for Drupal Essential Training gets as big as 5MB.) To change this limit:
- Click the WAMP icon in your system tray.
- Select "PHP". In the side menu, select "php.ini" to open a file containing PHP's configuration options.
- Search for the line, "upload_max_filesize = 2M".
- Change it to "upload_max_filesize = 32M" (or whatever you like).
- Save the file and restart WAMP. (Better yet, restart your computer entirely to be sure. I'm frankly not sure whether it makes a difference.)
- Now go back to that "Import" screen in phpMyAdmin: You should notice that the limit has changed. (Thanks to L.H. for pointing this out.)
- L.H. writes: "In Windows Vista, the WAMP icon disappears from the system tray after x time (not sure about the duration protocols). To make the WAMP icon re-appear (so that you can access localhost, phpmyadmin, php.ini, etc.), you have to activate the "start WAMP server" icon (from start menu, desktop or wherever); then the system tray icon reappears. Pain in the chicken, but that's Vista."
[Update, 16 August 2009: See also this thread for tips, particularly this comment.]
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I use Xampp, but I think they serve mostly the same purpose. Having a localhost version of multpile Drupal sites is excellent for testing plugins, theme development and doing dummy runs of upgrades. My Xampp server has saved my ass a few times with backups, restores and migrations.
I even managed to do an import from WordPress to Drupal 5.x then migrate to the 6.x version. And if you need portability, Xampp can be installed on a USB drive.
Thanks for your comment! I haven't tried out XAMPP -- I'll do that myself (on my Mac).
Unfortunately, I think it's not much of a solution to the problems outlined above because it requires using the command-line interface. That's too difficult for most people: If they can do that, they can edit PHP.ini just as easily.
Still, I'm sure this options will help someone, so thanks again.
can be found
http://drupal.org/node/157602
Thanks, I missed that page!
Does it need more memory to run under Windows than Linux? Or is it the same? The restarting with Windows is mandatory ofcourse ;-) I once installed a software which needed xml, asp, iis and some other stuff. If you didn't install it in the proper sequence it wouldn't work.
I honestly don't know whether it requires more memory in Windows. I would tend to say *no*, because the code is essentially the same: Only the environment is different. But I've learned better than to doubt the voraciousness of Windows' memory appetite... :-/
I just installed Drupal 6.14 on Windows Vista Home Premium and WAMP as local server,,,BUT search results always show NO results....
how do I make searching work?
Hey, Kern. First off, I deleted the other place on this site where you posted the same question, but here's what I believe is the answer.
Drupal periodically builds its "search index", which is necessary for search to work. However, if cron isn't running properly, the index won't be created or updated.
So: See about getting help with cron. There could be several things wrong, one of them being (simply) that you don't have it set up! Try the poormanscron module.
Good luck!
I'm making the changes in httpd.conf but the path in the Directory is not clear for me. My installation is in c:\wamp\www. There is my index.php. I used any convination of path and the clean URL is not working after stop and start the server. What is that path?. I suppose it is the please I have the site in my computer, is that right?.
Thank you.
I have a local WAMP installation with a version of a Drupal site in place.
I can open the site, but as soon as I click any link (i.e. "Create new account") I am kicked back to the localhost home page and then, none of the phpinfo() or phpmyadmin links work. In fact, even the wampserver logo is missing.
So something in the Drupal site is chaning php.ini settings?
Ideas?
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