Now to install Magento http://www.magentocommerce.com/ Including the Sample Data pack.

Note: Ensure to install the Sample Data pack before performing the installation of Magento itself.

Download both the ‘Sample Data’ pack and ‘Magento’, save these somewhere, decide where you want your new ecommerce shop to be installed, I’m going to install it here: http://www.project.dev/magento/

Unpack magento-1.0.19870.zip into D:\websites\project\htdocs seeing as the zip file contains the \magento\ folder, the path you’ll end up with is D:\websites\project\htdocs\magento

Unpack magento-sample-data-1.0.19870.zip into D:\websites\project\htdocs this will create a folder called D:\websites\project\htdocs\magento-sample-data-1.0.19870

Now is a good time to create your MySQL database, to do this open http://localhost/ where you should see the WampServer homepage, click ‘phpmyadmin’. Simply create a database by putting your database name ‘magento_sample’ (I decided to call it this so that I can create another called ‘magento_live’ for the real shop data) into the ‘Create new database’ field, leave all the defaults and click ‘Create’, you’ll notice the database name appear in the left column.

Installing Sample Data Archive for Magento 1.0.19870

Click ‘magento_sample’ in the left column then click the ‘Import’ tab at the top.

Browse for the sample data file, located D:\websites\project\htdocs\magento-sample-data-1.0.19870\magento_sample_data_for_1.0.19870.sql. Leave the defaults and click ‘Go’ at the bottom right. You’ll now be importing the sample data and it’ll take a little while. Once complete there’ll be a long list of database tables in the left column.

Configure WampServer Apache modules and PHP extensions

Before installing Magento ensure you complete the following:-

Click on the WampServer icon in the system tray

‘Apache’ -> ‘Apache Modules’ tick ‘rewrite_module’
‘PHP’ -> ‘PHP Extensions’ tick ‘php_curl’
‘PHP’ -> ‘PHP Extensions’ tick ‘php_mcrypt’

Now browse to http://www.project.dev/magento/ you should now see the first page of the Magento installation procedure.

Follow the installation procedure, changing the location, time zone, currency to your requirements. When you’re presented with the database configuration page, simply enter ‘magento_sample’ into the database field and proceed. (this is assuming that your MySQL user is ‘root’ and your password is blank).

Let me know how it goes.

The Installation process of WampServer2 was painless. http://www.wampserver.com/en/

The harder part was getting it configured the way I wanted to use it. Now I’ve sussed it, it’s a beauty.

I Installed WampServer2 in C:\wamp

My websites are located in D:\websites

The webroot of my ‘project’ is:-
D:\websites\project\htdocs

I would like to use this URL for ‘project’:-

http://www.project.dev/

Once you’ve installed WampServer2 check http://www.wampserver.com/en/presentation.php for an overview of how to use it.

So, now you’re all up and running and you can see the wampserver page at http://localhost/

Step Two

Seeing your website ‘project’ at http://www.project.dev/

Find your hosts file:-
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\
open hosts in your text editor
At the end of the file add the following:-

127.0.0.1       www.project.dev project.dev

Find your httpd-vhost.conf file:-
C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.2.8\conf\extra\
open httpd-vhost.conf in your text editor
At the end of the file add the following:-

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@project.dev
DocumentRoot "D:\websites\project\htdocs"
ServerName project.dev
ServerAlias www.project.dev
ErrorLog "logs/project.dev-error.log"
CustomLog "logs/project.dev-access.log" common
</VirtualHost>

Save both these files and restart wamp:-
Click on the WampServer icon in the system tray
Click ‘Restart all Services’

Ensuring that WampServer has started successfully try visiting http://www.project.dev/

As long as you’ve created this path:-
D:\websites\project\htdocs
You should see at least:-
Index of /project

Now go ahead and build your website locally.