How to set up a test server that supports multiple sites and is accessible from outside
Before using a test server, my web programming experience was really slower. In fact, every time I had to modify something or try a piece of code, I had to upload it first to my remote server. If the Internet connection had a fluctuation, I could not continue working at all. This also meant I had to first set up a test website if I didn't work on the live address. One day I had the curiosity of checking out one of these LAMP distributions (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP), just with the Linux variable taken out. They call them a LAMP package for Windows. It contains a preconfigured Apache 2 server with PHP 4 and 5, a switcher between the two, MySQL 5 (you even got a phpMyAdmin script already set up) and a mail server called Mercury32 that enables you to send and receive mails from your own scripts, check out newsletters and so on.