Portable Webdev Platform
I know there’s a great number of my readers out there who are also keen and avid web developers, always looking for the coolest, newest web development technology. OK, there may not be many of you, but nonetheless, I’m going to show you today one thing that’s made my web development life much easier. 
The Web Development Process
Generally, when I’m designing a website for someone, I’ll follow several steps in the process. The first several steps are outside the scope of this article, and involve interaction theory and information architecture and data structures and all that. But then I get down to designing the actual page, and that process follows these steps:
- Code a static instance of the site.
- Create from that model a theme for the CMS Du Jour.
- Test the theme and CMS on a test server.
- Deploy the theme to a live instance of the CMS.
Of course, you immediately see a problem with using this model for your own web development. “Chad, all I have is a PC running Windows. I don’t have a test server that can run all those fancy CMSs.”
Wanna bet?
The One-click Server Installer
It’s actually a lot easier than you think to set up a test CMS environment on your development PC. Content Management Systems normally run on a server technology “stack” that consists of the following:
- An Operating System (Like Windows)
- Server Software (This is the program that gives your browser a webpage to display when it asks politely)
- A Webpage Generation Engine (Which basically makes it so you don’t have to hand-craft each individual webpage)
- A Database (Which is where all the content, like the text of your pages and the pictures are stored)
Fortunately, you don’t even have to know any of that in order to get it all working.
There’s a little program called WAMP (each letter stands for one of the items above) that will do it all for you! All you have to do is install the thing.
And that really is all there is to setting up the server platform.
The Content Management System
Now all you have to do is get the CMS running on the platform you just set up. Piece of cake, right? Actually, it is. Three steps:
First, put your CMS on the server. Let’s say you’re using an easy CMS like WordPress (which this site runs on). First thing you’ll do is download the WordPress files and unzip them. You’ll want to move the unzipped files to your new Server’s root folder (if you installed WAMPserver, it’s probably C:\wamp\www\).
Second, you’ll add a database for WordPress to use. If you installed WAMPserver and now have it running, it should have put a little icon in your taskbar next to your clock. When you click it, you’ll get a menu, and among the options will be “phpMyAdmin”. Go there.
This is a pretty complicated interface, but I’ll give you a shortcut. Go to the “Priveleges” option about 2/3 of the way down the midddle column. Just add a user. After entering your new user’s information, check the option to “Create database with same name and grant all privileges,” and save. (Note that you can make the password easy because no one else can access this server.) That’s all you have to do to make a database.
Third, just go through the installer. Enter ‘http://localhost/’ in your browser’s address bar and click the directory where you installed your WordPress files. It should be a very quick (less than 30 seconds) matter to configure the CMS to access the database you set up.
Voila! You’re done. Really. That’s all there is to it.
Now you can take your CMS with you wherever you go.
