WAMP Installation Currupted

The WAMP installation on my Dev Machine crashed for some reason I don't know what? It took me an hour to restore it. It's setbacks like these that frustrate the hell out of me. I haven't quiet begun to design my website and my development environment keeps messing up.

I've been reading a lot of PEAR documentation lately. It's been over a week and I haven't exactly started the coding process. This web designing thing is so time consuming. And It doesn't help when your the only one on the project. If only I could find some qualified Web Designer to help me.

Is there a helping soul out there?!

Development Machine Setup

Finally, got my development machine installed and configured. Took me a whole afternoon. It takes so long because of the Internet searches for all the 'How Tos'. The Dev Machine's configuration is 'Windows XP Pro', Apache, Mysql, PHP, PEAR, and Smarty (WAMP).

Now, all I gotta figure out is how to set up a local PEAR installation on a shared UNIX (FreeBSD) web host. I took a whack at it and turned out to be a fruitless effort as of yet. I'll take another swipe at it sometime later.

For those of you who want to subscribe to a great web hosting service then you should check out http://www.aplus.net/. Subscribing to any other web hosting service is just a waste of money and most people I've talked to who have a website are paying ridiculous amounts for a crappy web hosting service.

How To Install Smarty On WAMP

Source: http://news.php.net/php.smarty.dev/2703

Assuptions:

• WAMP install directory is 'd:\wamp'.
• PHP install directory is 'd:\wamp\bin\php\php.x.x.x'

Instructions:

1. Download Smarty - http://www.smarty.net/
2. Extract files, rename Smarty.x.x.x to smarty (suggest OUTSIDE of your www root!) Example: d:\wamp\bin\php\php.x.x.x\smarty
3. Edit php.ini's include_path and add the location of the libs folder.
4. example: include_path = ".;d:\wamp\bin\php\php.x.x.x\smarty\libs"
5. Restart Apache Service
6. Setup these two folders INSIDE your (www), 'd:\wamp\www\smarty\templates' (this is where your templates will go), 'd:\wamp\www\smarty\configs'.
7. Setup these two folders OUTSIDE of your webroot: 'd:\wamp\bin\php\php.x.x.x\smarty\templates_c', 'd:\wamp\bin\php\php.x.x.x\smarty\cache'.
8. Setup security settings for the web server to write to these four folders.

Note: Thanks to John Martinez for the tutorial.