What server platform do you use?

[Guest]

I've really been struggling, over the past couple of weeks with my Wamp server platform.  It seemed like no matter what I tried, I could never get things to work locally.  I'd post code to GoDaddy and everything would work fine, but it just would never work locally.  And then someone on the Wamp forums tells me that the reason I'm having such a hard time with e-mail forms is because Wamp doesn't support e-mail.  (?!)   That certainly would have been nice to know.  So, to get to the point, I'm looking to install a new server platform and I certainly don't want to find things out the hard way again.  What is the best, all inclusive, easy to setup/use server platform out there?  I've done a little looking and Web Developer Server Suite looks like a possibility.

Any recommendations would be appreciated.

Incidentally, I need one that will work with PHP

[RJweb]

I use wamp, but not for my mail, I just up load to my host, and test it there

[David_Powers · Accepted solution]

bnther wrote:

I've really been struggling, over the past couple of weeks with my Wamp server platform.

The real question is "what have you been struggling with?"

It seems as though your real problem is that you have been trying to test email. The simple fact is that no local PHP server is going to support email, at least not straight out of the box. The reason is very simple. The PHP mail() function simply hands the mail to the local server's mail transport agent (MTA). Apart from handing to the MTA, PHP is not involved in sending the mail. Your problem is that Windows computers don't have an MTA. In the past, you could configure php.ini to send the mail to your ISP's SMTP server. However, the proliferation of spam means that ISPs now block mail that comes from an unidentified source. SMTP servers usually require a username and password, but the mail() function doesn't support SMTP authentication.

Bottom line: unless you have the skills and patience to install and configure an MTA on your local computer, the way to test mail() is to upload the script to your remote server. Sending email is just about the only aspect of PHP that cannot be easily tested locally. Forget searching for an alternative unless you're having other problems with WAMP.

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply.

I think that you may be on to something.  I installed Xampp thinking that this would fix things and it didn't make any immediate difference.  Whether or not it would, providing I had everything set correctly, I really don't know.  What I do know, is that I've spent too much time on this.  I need to spend more time on learning PHP than on trying to setup a local server.  I'll just upload things to my GoDaddy account for testing.  This is time consuming, but at least it works.

Thanks again for the reply.

[David_Powers]

I need to spend more time on learning PHP than on trying to setup a local server.

If you're interested in learning PHP, you might want to take a look at some of the books I have written. They deal specifically with using PHP in Dreamweaver. You can find more details on my site at http://foundationphp.com/.

[jon8]

Powers books are worth buying.

I think XAMPP for windows or MAMP for osx both make it easy to get started.

Also take a look at Zend Server CE which looks great.

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply.

I loaded XAMPP, but I have mixed feelings about it.  I don't care for it starting automatically when the computer boots up.  With Wamp, you would turn it on/off like any other application.  I'll take a look at the ones you mentioned.  Thanks for the input.