Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Set up a WAMP and ColdFusion Testing Server Super Fast

Ever need to set up a testing server on a local machine during the development of a project or possibly even studying. I know I have and here's what just may be the quickest way to get up and running in less than 15 minutes on a Windows machine. Although it may look like a lot of instructions, the process actually goes pretty quick.

The server configuration will contain the following:

  1. Apache
  2. MySQL
  3. MySQL GUI Tools
  4. PHP
  5. ColdFusion 8

First thing to do is download the following:

  1. WAMP
  2. MySQL GUI Tools
  3. ColdFusion 8 Developer Edition

Note: To get ColdFusion, you must register with Adobe or use an existing account that you have with them.

WAMP Installation:

  1. Open the WAMP executable and click next to begin the set up.
  2. Select the radio button indicating that you accept the agreement.
  3. Accept the default location to install WAMP to.
  4. Don't worry about creating any shortcuts, and click next.
  5. Click the install button and WAMP will then be installed on your system.
  6. During installation you will be asked for SMTP, email information and for a default browser.
  7. Once set up completes click finish to launch WAMP.
  8. Apache should now be running but WAMP Server will not be online. to put WAMP online, click the WAMP Server icon down by the system tray and select "Put Online".
  9. Now Apache MySQL and PHP should be up and running.

MySQL GUI Tools Installation:

  1. MySQL GUI Tools are pretty simple to install. Just execute the installer and follow the screens. You basically will just be clicking through the wizard until installation is complete.
  2. Once the installation has complete the following 2 main applications should be installed, MySQL Admin and MySQL Query Browser.

MySQL User Accounts and Privileges:

  1. By default there is no password set for the root user account which is a security risk, therefore a password must be set for this account.
  2. Click the WAMP Server icon located in the system tray and select Localhost.
  3. Under “Tools” select the “phpmyadmin” link to go to the PHPMyAdmin page.
  4. On the main top menu click the Privileges link.
  5. Click the edit button for 127.0.0.1 host root account.
  6. Now locate “Change password” and enter a password in both fields and click the corresponding “Go” button.
  7. Now go back to the Privileges page once again and this time click the edit button for the localhost root account and do the same as before. Locate “Change password” and enter a password in both fields. The password should be the same as 127.0.0.1 root account.
  8. Now click the “Home” button on the left sidebar. You should receive the following error: “#1045 - Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: NO)” This problem can easily be corrected so not to worry.
  9. Locate the location where you installed WAMP. The default location is C:\wamp.
  10. Now enter the “app” directory then the phpmyadmin directory.
  11. Now locate and open the config.inc.php file with any text editor.
  12. We are looking for line 16 (may be different), but the code should read $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = '';
  13. Between the single brackets, enter the password you entered into PHPMyAdmin ex: $cfg['Servers'][$i]['password'] = 'mypassword';
  14. Save the file and refresh the PHPMyAdmin page. The error should now be gone and be able to view the PHPMyAmin page.
  15. Finally... we need to create a new user because using the root user account is a big security risk and highly fround upon.
  16. Go back into the Privileges section and click on the “Add a new user” link.
  17. For “User name”, just enter a username of your choice leaving the select menu as it’s default value.
  18. Ignore the “Host” select menu and continue on to the “Password” field.
  19. Enter a password in the password field leaving the default value for the select menu.
  20. Make sure to Re-type the user password in the next field labled “Re-type”.
  21. Now on to the Global privileges section. Here we can give the new user permissions to execute SQL commands. I recommend just allowing the basics such as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, FILE and CREATE unless you think you may need to run more commands. What I highly suggest is to leave the DROP command un checked for the reason that mistakes do happen. Meaning, you could create a database and some tables, populate those tables and execute the DROP command by accident. That would be very very……bad. Especially if you have hundreds or thousands or millions of rows in your tables. SO.....to be safe, just leave it un checked.
  22. That should be it for setting up MySQL. You should now be able to either use PHPMyAdmin or MySQL Admin and MySQL Query Browser to make databases, tables and edit table content.

Now for ColdFusion:

  1. Run the ColdFusion executable and wait patiently for the installation wizard to show (Could sometimes take 2 minutes or even longer to show).
  2. Once the ColdFusion installation screen appears select the language of choice from the drop down and click OK to continue.
  3. Click Next for the next screen and click the “I accept the terms of the License Agreement” radio button and click Next.
  4. Select the Developer Edition checkbox and click Next
  5. Accept the default configuration of “Server configuration” and click Next
  6. Accept the default selected checkboxes for Subcomponents and click Next
  7. Accept the default installation location for ColdFusion to be installed and click Next.
  8. Click the radio button for “I accept the terms of the License Agreement” radio button and click Next.
  9. No need to enter a Serial Number since we don’t have one, so just click Next.
  10. Now to set up ColdFusion to run under the WAMP Server.
  11. Click the Add button and leave the default of Apache selected.
  12. Click the “Configuration Directory” button so we can find the location of the Apache configuration file.
  13. Locate the default location where you installed WAMP, the default is C:\wamp and navigate through the following directories. bin\apache\apache”version number”\conf\
  14. Just select the conf directory and click the OK button.
  15. Now click the “Directory and file name of server binary” button and locate the default location where you installed WAMP.
  16. Now navigate through the following directories, bin\apache\apache”version number”\bin\ and select the httpd.exe and click select.
  17. Click OK on the configuration window and click Next.
  18. Now to choose where to extract the ColdFusion Administrator. Click the “Choose” button.
  19. Locate the default location where you installed WAMP and select the www directory, click OK and then click Next to continue.
  20. Enter a password for the ColdFusion Administrator and click Next.
  21. Don’t worry about enabling RDS so just click Next.
  22. Now click Install to run the ColdFusion installation.
  23. Once the installation is complete, make sure the checkbox for “Launch the Configuration Wizard in the default browser” is checked and click Done.
  24. Once the Configuration Wizard begins in the browser, enter the password you entered for the ColdFusion Administrator and click Login.
  25. Now you wait for the configuration to complete…….
  26. Once the configuration is complete, Click the OK button to open the ColdFusion Administrator.

That should do it for this whole process of getting a testing server up and running in about 15 minutes. Feel free to comment on my instructions especially if I made a mistake somewhere.

- Pete

13 comments:

Justus said...

This is exactly what I needed! I've used wamp for years but never installed coldfusion for it. Great work!!

Thanks!

Daniel said...

Perfect, Straight forward and to the point. Thank you.

Marylka said...

Thank you, this guide has helped me to set up ColdFusion to WAMP

DaGeneral said...

Thank you for your excellent and very complete directions. I was able to install all components, including CF 9 in a very short time with no problems.

Gigi said...

Very thorough and easy to follow directions, couldn't have gone wrong even if I wanted to.

Thanks!

Alagukannan said...

thanks for the gr8 post,the following steps worked for cf9 and wamp 2.0 as well.

Anonymous said...

I have struggle for many hours for this. this is indeed very good information

sujeeta

~ said...

This is great. I tried for over 24hrs to set up a development environment using IIS but was unsuccessful. I already had a wamp instance installed and this article had me up and running in no time. All I had to do was uninstall CF11 and reinstall. Thanks a million.

Mark
www.cubepro.us

Unknown said...

im using coldfusion 9 and it says i need an earlier version of apache. my version is 2.4.9 and it requires an earlier version of maybe 2.x or later. do i need to install another version of wamp or there is a way to make an upgrade

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