Wamp Server - Redirect to an html file? [duplicate] - wamp

I am installing the Wamp Server on another computer to run a mid-sized database and UI. I have been successful in blocking IIS and routing the server to Localhost:8080. But whenever I try to access on of my projects from the localhost homepage, in the www file; I get redirected to a Page not found error.
When I hover above the links the directory always comes up "http:// ProjectFolderNameHere /". when it's supposed to be "http:// LocalHost:8080 / ProjectFolderNameHere /". What can I do to get the links working properly?
My Machine runs on Windows 7 Home Edition 64-bits, and I already have Microsoft's IIS disabled.

How to create a Virtual Host in WampServer
WAMPServer 3 has made this process much easier!
You can do almost everything from a utility provided as part of WAMPServer.
Create a folder inside to contain your project.site. This can be under the C:\wamp\www\ directory or in a completely seperate folder like C:\websites.
Create a folder inside the location you have chosen EG C:\websites\project1\www or under the c:\wamp\www\project1\www
Now open localhost wampmanager->localhost and click on the link Add a Virtual Host under the TOOLS section on the homepage.
You will see a page like this:
Fill in the fields as specified by the instructions above each field
The Virtual Host config will have been created for you.
Now you must restart the DNS Cache. You can do this from the wampmanager menus like this right click wampmanager->Tools->Restart DNS. The DNS Cache will be restarted and then Apache will also be stopped and restarted. When the wampmanager icon goes green again all is completed.
Now you must create a simple index.php file or install your site into the folder you created above.
Assuming your VH was called project.dev You should see that name under the Your Virtual Hosts Section of the WAMPServer homepage.
You can launch the site from this menu, or just use the new Domain Name in the address bar EG project1.dev and the site shoudl launch.
Old WAMPServer 2.5 mechanism, or if you want to do it all manually
There has been a change of concept in WampServer 2.5 and above and there is a good reason for this change!
In WampServer it is now STRONGLY encouraged to create a Virtual Host for each of your projects, even if you hold them in a \wamp\www\subfolder structure.
Virtual Hosts Documentation
Virtual Host Examples
The WampServer home page ( \wamp\www\index.php ) now expects you to have created a Virtual Host for all your projects and will therefore work properly only if you do so.
History
In order to make life easier for beginners using WampServer to learn PHP Apache and MySQL it was suggested that you create subfolders under the \wamp\www\ folder.
wamp
|-- www
|-- Chapter1
|-- Chapter2
|-- etc
These subfolders would then show as links in the WampServer Homepage under a menu called 'Your Projects' and these links would contain a link to localhost/subfoldername.
Acceptable only for simple tutorials
This made life easy for the complete beginner, and was perfectly acceptable for example for those following tutorials to learn PHP coding.
However it was never intended for use when developing a real web site that you would later want to copy to your live hosted server.
In fact if you did use this mechanism it often caused problems as the live sites configuration would not match your development configuration.
The Problem for real website development.
The reason for this is of course that the default DocumentRoot setting for wamp is
DocumentRoot "c:/wamp/www/"
regardless of what your subfolder was called.
This ment that often used PHP code that queried the structure or your site received different information when running on your development WampServer to what it would receive when running on a live hosted server, where the DocumentRoot configuration points to the folder at the top of the website file hierarchy.
This kind of code exists in many frameworks and CMS's for example WordPress and Joomla etc.
For Example
Lets say we have a project called project1 held in wamp\www\project1 and run incorrectly as localhost/project1/index.php
This is what would be reported by some of the PHP command in question:
$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = localhost
$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] = localhost
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = c:/wamp/www
Now if we had correctly defined that site using a Virtual Host definition and ran it as http://project1 the results on the WAMPServer devlopment site will match those received when on a live hosted environment.
$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = project1
$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] = project1
$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] = c:/wamp/www/project1
Now this difference may seem trivial at first but if you were to use a framework like WordPress or one of the CMS's like Joomla for example, this can and does cause problems when you move your site to a live server.
How to create a Virtual Host in WampServer
Actually this should work basically the same for any wndows Apache server, with differences only in where you may find the Apache config files.
There are 3 steps to create your first Virtual Host in Apache, and only 2 if you already have one defined.
Create the Virtual Host definition(s)
Add your new domain name to the HOSTS file.
Uncomment the line in httpd.conf that includes the Virtual Hosts definition file.
Step 1, Create the Virtual Host definition(s)
Edit the file called httpd-hosts.conf which for WampServer lives in
\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf
(Apache version numbers may differ, engage brain before continuing)
If this is the first time you edit this file, remove the default example code, it is of no use.
I am assuming we want to create a definition for a site called project1 that lives in
\wamp\www\project1
Very important, first we must make sure that localhost still works so that is the first VHOST definition we will put in this file.
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "c:/wamp/www"
ServerName localhost
ServerAlias localhost
<Directory "c:/wamp/www">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require local
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Now we define our project: and this of course you do for each of your projects as you start a new one.
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "c:/wamp/www/project1"
ServerName project1
<Directory "c:/wamp/www/project1">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require local
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
NOTE: That each Virtual Host as its own DocumentRoot defined. There are also many other parameters you can add to a Virtual Hosts definition, check the Apache documentation.
Small aside
The way virtual hosts work in Apache: The first definition in this file will also be the default site, so should the domain name used in the browser not match any actually defined virtually hosted domain, making localhost the first domain in the file will therefore make it the site that is loaded if a hack attempt just uses your IP Address.
So if we ensure that the Apache security for this domain is ALWAYS SET TO
Require local
any casual hack from an external address will receive an error and not get into your PC, but should you misspell a domain you will be shown the WampServer homepage, because you are on the same PC as WampServer and therfore local.
Step 2:
Add your new domain name to the HOSTS file.
Now we need to add the domain name that we have used in the Virtual Host definition to the HOSTS file so that windows knows where to find it. This is similiar to creating a DNS A record, but it is only visible in this case on this specific PC.
Edit C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
The file has no extension and should remain that way. Watch out for notepad, as it may try and add a .txt extension if you have no better editor.
I suggest you download Notepad++, its free and a very good editor.
Also this is a protected file so you must edit it with administrator privileges, so launch you editor using the Run as Administrator menu option.
The hosts file should look like this when you have completed these edits
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 project1
::1 localhost
::1 project1
Note that you should have definitions in here for the IPV4 loopback address 127.0.0.1 and also the IPV6 loopback address ::1 as Apache is now IPV6 aware and the browser will use either IPV4 or IPV6 or both. I have no idea how it decides which to use, but it can use either if you have the IPV6 stack turned on, and most window OS's do as of XP SP3.
Now we must tell windows to refresh its domain name cache, so launch a command window again using the Run as Administrator menu option again, and do the following.
net stop dnscache
net start dnscache
This forces windows to clear its domain name cache and reload it, in reloading it will re-read the HOSTS file so now it knows about the domain project1.
Step 3: Uncomment the line in httpd.conf that includes the Virtual Hosts definition file.
Edit your httpd.conf, use the wampmanager.exe menus to make sure you edit the correct file.
Find this line in httpd.conf
# Virtual hosts
#Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
And just remove the # to uncomment that line.
To activate this change in you running Apache we must now stop and restart the Apache service.
wampmanager.exe -> Apache -> Service -> Restart Service
Now if the WAMP icon in the system tray does not go GREEN again, it means you have probably done something wrong in the \wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\conf\extra\httpd-hosts.conf file.
If so here is a useful mechanism to find out what is wrong. It uses a feature of the Apache exe (httpd.exe) to check its config files and report errors by filename and line numbers.
Launch a command window.
cd \wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\bin
httpd -t
So fix the errors and retest again until you get the output
Syntax OK
Now there is one more thing.
There are actually 2 new menu items on the wampmanager menu system. One called 'My Projects' which is turned on by default.
And a second one, called 'My Virtual Hosts', which is not activated by default.
'My Projects' will list any sub directory of the \wamp\www directory and provide a link to launch the site in that sub directory.
As I said earlier, it launches 'project1` and not 'localhost/project1' so to make the link work we must create a Virtual Host definition to make this link actually launch that site in your browser, without the Virtual Host definition it's likely to launch a web search for the site name as a keyword or just return a site not found condition.
The 'My Virtual Hosts' menu item is a little different. It searches the file that is used to define Virtual Hosts ( we will get to that in a minute ) and creates menu links for each ServerName parameter it finds and creates a menu item for each one.
This may seem a little confusing as once we create a Virtual Host definition for the sub directories of the \wamp\www folder some items will appear on both of the 'My Projects' menu and the 'My Virtual Hosts' menu's.
How do I turn this other 'My Virtual Hosts' menu on?
Make a backup of the \wamp\wampmanager.tpl file, just in case you make a mistake, its a very important file.
Edit the \wamp\wampmanager.tpl
Find this parameter ;WAMPPROJECTSUBMENU, its in the '[Menu.Left]' section.
Add this new parameter ;WAMPVHOSTSUBMENU either before or after the ;WAMPPROJECTSUBMENU parameter.
Save the file.
Now right click the wampmanager icon, and select 'Refresh'. If this does not add the menu, 'exit' and restart wampmanager.
Big Note
The new menu will only appear if you already have some Virtual Hosts defined! Otherwise you will see no difference until you define a VHOST.
Now if you take this to its logical extension
You can now move your web site code completely outside the \wamp\ folder structure simply by changing the DocumentRoot parameter in the VHOST definition. So for example you could do this:
Create a folder on the wamp disk or any other disk ( beware of network drive, they are a bit more complicated)
D:
MD websites
CD websites
MD example.com
CD example.com
MD www
You now copy your site code to, or start creating it in the \websites\example.com\www folder and define your VHOST like this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "d:/websites/example.com/www"
ServerName example.dev
ServerAlias www.example.dev
<Directory "d:/websites/example.com/www">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
</Directory>
php_flag display_errors Off
php_flag log_errors On
php_value max_upload_size 40M
php_value max_execution_time 60
php_value error_log "d:/wamp/logs/example_com_phperror.log"
</VirtualHost>
Then add this new development domain to the HOSTS file:
127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost
127.0.0.1 project1
::1 project1
127.0.0.1 example.dev
::1 example.dev
NOTE: It is not a good idea to use a ServerName or ServerAlias that is the same as your live domain name, as if we had used example.com as the ServerName it would mean we could no longer get to the real live site from this PC as it would direct example.com to 127.0.0.1 i.e. this PC and not out onto the internet.
ALSO:
See that I have allowed this site to be accessed from the internet from within the VHOST definitions, this change will apply to only this site and no other. Very useful for allowing a client to view your changes for an hour or so without having to copy them to the live server.
This does mean that we have to edit this file manually to turn this access on and off rather than use the Put Online/Offline menu item on wampmanager.
Also I have added some modifications to the PHP config, again that will only apply to this one site.
Very useful when maintaining a site with specific requirement unlike all the other sites you maintain.
I guess we can assume from the parameters used that it has a long running page in it somewhere and it is very badly written and will not run with errors being displayed on the browser without making a horrible mess of the page. Believe me sites like this exist and people still want them maintained badly. But this mean we only have to change these parameters for this specific site and not globally to all Virtual sites running on WampServer.

I believe this is the best solution:
Open index.php in www folder and set
change line
30:$suppress_localhost = true;
to
$suppress_localhost = false;
This will ensure the project is prefixed with your local host IP/name

Open index.php in www folder and set
$suppress_localhost = false;
This will prepend http://localhost/ to your project links

In order to access project from the homepage you need to create a Virtual Host first.
Most easiest way to do this is to use Wamp's Add a Virtual Host Utility.
Just follow these steps:
Create a folder inside "C:\wamp\www\" directory and give it a name that you want to give to your site for eg. 'mysite'. So the path would be "C:\wamp\www\mysite".
Now open localhost's homepage in your browser, under Tools menu click on Add a Virtual Host link.
Enter the name of the virtual host, that name must be the name of the folder we created inside www directory i.e. 'mysite'.
Enter absolute path of the virtual host i.e. "C:\wamp\www\mysite\" without quotes and click the button below saying 'Start the creation of the VirtualHost'.
Virtual Host created, now you just need to 'Restart DNS'. To do this right click the wamp server's tray menu icon, click on Tools > Restart DNS and let the tray menu icon become green again.
All set! Now just create 'index.php' page inside "C:\wamp\www\mysite\" directory. Add some code in 'index.php' file, like
<?php
echo "<h1>Hello World</h1>";
?>
Now you can access the projects from the localhost's homepage. Just click the project link and you'll see 'Hello World' printed on your screen.

You can follow all steps by #RiggsFolly thats is really good answer, If you do not want to create virtual host and want to use like previous localhost/example/ or something like that you can use answer by #Arunu
But if you still face problem please use this method,
Locate your wamp folder (Eg. c:/Wamp/) where you have installed
Goto Wamp/www/
Open index.php file
find this code $projectContents .= '<li>'.$file.'</li>';
modify it add localhost after http:// $projectContents .= '<li>'.$file.'</li>';
Restart wamp server
open localhost see the updated links
Hope you got your url like previous version of wamp server.

How To Fix The Broken Icon Links (blank.gif, text.gif, etc.)
Unfortunately as previously mentioned, simply adding a virtual host to your project doesn't fix the broken icon links.
The Problem:
WAMP/Apache does not change the directory reference for the icons to your respective installation directory. It is statically set to "c:/Apache24/icons" and 99.9% of users Apache installation does not reside here. Especially with WAMP.
The Fix:
Find your Apache icons directory! Typically it will be located here: "c:/wamp/bin/apache/apache2.4.9/icons". However your mileage may vary depending on your installation and if your Apache version is different, then your path will be different as well.\
Open up httpd-autoindex.conf in your favorite editor. This file can usually be found here: "C:\wamp\bin\apache\apache2.4.9\conf\extra\httpd-autoindex.conf". Again, if your Apache version is different, then so will this path.
Find this definition (usually located near the top of the file):
Alias /icons/ "c:/Apache24/icons/"
<Directory "c:/Apache24/icons">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>
Replace the "c:/Apache24/icons/" directories with your own. IMPORTANT You MUST have a trailing forward slash in the first directory reference. The second directory reference must have no trailing slash. Your results should look similar to this. Again, your directory may differ:
Alias /icons/ "c:/wamp/bin/apache/apache2.4.9/icons/"
<Directory "c:/wamp/bin/apache/apache2.4.9/icons">
Options Indexes MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>
Restart your Apache server and enjoy your cool icons!

$suppress_localhost = false;
This did the trick for me.

This works on Wamp 3+.
Go to wamp folder (wamp/ or wamp64/)
Open wampmanager.conf
Find urlAddLocalhost param and set it on: urlAddLocalhost = "on"
There should not be the need to tweak the index.php in www folder.

Re: Wampserver LocalHost links not working correctly
This is as of June 2014 with Wampserver2.5 (maybe they'll fix this in later builds).
Note: to use LocalHost:8080 instead of LocalHost just make the appropriate changes in the edits mentioned below.
There are 2 aspects of this issue -
The first is to be able to access items under "Your Projects" from the Wamp localhost homepage.
The second is to be able to correctly access items listed in the Wampserver Icon Taskbar's "My Projects" list.
To fix the first (to be able to access items under "Your Projects" from the Wamp localhost homepage) you will need to do the following...
There are 2 edits that you must make in the index.php file located in your wamp\www folder (usually C:\wamp\www)
1) on Line 30 change
$suppress_localhost = true;
to
$suppress_localhost = false;
2) on line 338 change
$projectContents .= '<li>'.$file.'</li>';
to
$projectContents .= '<li>'.$file.'</li>';
After you've made the above edits - if the Wampserver is running just refresh the local host page and the changes become immediately effective.
To fix the 2nd item (the Wampserver Icon Taskbar's "My Projects" list):
You need to edit C:\wamp\scripts\refresh.php
Locate line 651 and change the section of the line that reads
Parameters: "http://'.$projectContents[$i].'/"; Glyph: 5
to
Parameters: "http://localhost//'.$projectContents[$i].'/"; Glyph: 5
After you make these 2nd set of changes you may have to force Wampserver to refresh the "My Projects" list by toggling the Put Online/Offline option at the bottom of the Wamp Icon Tray App.

check wamp server icon is green or not if it is green then it is working if not then you have to follow these steps to do
a. all the programs should be closed before running the wamp because most of the cases some softwares like skype takes the same port (80) which is using by wamp.
b. you can change the port of skype : Tool-s->oprions->advanced->connection untick use port 80
restart the wamp it will work.
SECOND case
when you click on the project in loalhost it does not show the localhost infront of the project name and because of that it looks like wamp is not working then you have to one thing on only
. go to wamp index.php file and change $suppress_localhost = false; from $suppress_localhost = true; or try vice versa it will work

Navigate to your www directory (if you are using wamp server) htdocs (if on XAMPP). Open your admin.php and search on project contents/ or just go directly to line number 339 and change the link, inserting 'local host to the link .
That should work ,,

I find it's a lot easier (than accepted answer) to create a local subdomain by project and tell Apache to serve multiple sites by name.
For example, let's say you created a project under c:/wamp64/www/sites/mysite, to be able to access it at http://mysite.localhost you simply need to do the following:
1. Tell your machine to answer to different names
Add 127.0.0.1 mysite.localhost to C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
2. Flush your DNS cache
Open a Command Prompt as administrator and type net stop dnscache, then net start dnscache.
3. Tell Apache where to look
Click on Wamp's icon in tray, go to Apache -> httpd.conf, and add this at the end:
# Tells Apache to identify which site by name
NameVirtualHost *:80
# Tells Apache to serve the default WAMP Server page to "localhost"
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
ServerName localhost
DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/www"
</VirtualHost>
# Tells Apache to serve Client 1's pages to "client1.localhost"
# Duplicate and modify this block to add another client
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
# The name to respond to
ServerName client1.localhost
# Folder where the files live
DocumentRoot "C:/wamp64/www/sites/mysite"
# A few helpful settings...
<Directory "C:/wamp64/www/sites/mysite">
allow from all
order allow,deny
# Enables .htaccess files for this site
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
# Apache will look for these two files, in this order, if no file is specified in the URL
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</VirtualHost>
(source)
4. Restart Apache
Click on Wamp's icon in tray, select "restart"
5. Define a base url
Go to your project folder, add <base href="http://mysite.localhost" /> to your <head> section to prevent /links to server root from being broken.
Personally, I inject this html code dynamically into my template using PHP (something like $site_root = (IS_LOCALHOST) ? '<base href="http://mysite.localhost" />' : null;) so I don't have to bother removing that once on production.

Hello you need to open the index.php from the wamp server and change $suppress_localhost = false; from $suppress_localhost = true; then your wamp will working fine

Related

Access Local Domain Name Website as API server in WAMP

I have two local Domain which work fine, however, the otherA domain is the API server that the otherB domain consumes API. The problem is it can't access the otherA domain, and returns network error something like
option 1
let apiserver = 'http://localserverA.local'
axios.get(`${apiserver}/apicall`).....
catch( ---> return network error
But this works
option 2
let apiserver = 'http://127.0.0.1:8000'
axios.get(`${apiserver}/apicall`).....
returns 200 ok
The problem with option 2 is to run php built in server which not a good idea because some set up in databases requires domain local host to access its data.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName localserverA.local
ServerAlias localserverA.local
DocumentRoot C:/projects/r/projects/A/web
<Directory "C:/projects/r/projects/A/web">
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
Allow from All
Allow from 127.0.0.1
Allow from ::1
#FallbackResource /app.php
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
I can even ping my domain name, it works well in browser but got network error when endpoint called via javascript. Works well in production
Any Idea?
This may help you:
Go to directory (from where your landing page load, if you have laravel project you need to go to public directory) to your project in command promt and fire command.
php -S <ip addresss>: <any port no>
like this
php -S 192.168.1.62:4200
Now you can access that project using 192.168.1.62:4200
You need to change your %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file. Add next line:
127.0.0.1 localserverA.local

Wamp is stuck on "Server Offline" after directory change

I wanted to change the folder from which Wamp reads its files, from the www folder inside the wamp folder to somewhere else.
I've tried to change the httpd.conf file and replace each occurrence of the original www folder with my new folder. The problem is that after I do that and run Wamp, it is stuck on an orange icon with the message "Server Offline" and doesn't seem to really start. When I change the httpd.conf file back to what it was Wamp manages to run successfully.
What am I doing wrong? How can I change the www folder and still have a working Wamp?
It is best to create Virtual Hosts for this purpose. Leave wamps stuff where it is and create a Virtual Hosts for each of your projects.
HowTo: Create Virtual Hosts in WAMPServer
BEFORE DOING ANY OF THIS PLEASE ENSURE APACHE AND MYSQL ARE WORKING PROPERLY FIRST!!!
Create a new folder outside the wamp directory structure. This folder can be on any disk drive visible to the PC running wamp. So if you installed WAMP on C:\ this could be on D:\ or E:\ etc
C:\websites
Create a subfolder in c:\websites for each site you want to create.
eg:
C:\websites\site1
C:\websites\site2
Edit the file C:\wamp\bin\apache\apachex.y.z\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf where x,y and z are the version numbers of apache that you actually have installed.
NOTE: If you are switching between 2 or more versions of apache this will have to be done to all your versions of apache in turn.
SUGGESTION: I like to use the format sitename.dev to make it obvious to me that I am dealing with my localhost development copy of a site, you may prefer another notation, thats ok, the word dev has no actual defined meaning in this case, its just my way of naming my development versions of a live site.
Remove the lines that already exists in this file. They are just examples.
NameVirtualHost *:80
## must be first so the the wamp menu page loads when you use just localhost as the domain name
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/www"
ServerName localhost
ServerAlias localhost
<Directory "C:/wamp/www">
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
Allow from localhost
Allow from ::1
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "C:/websites/site1"
ServerName site1.dev
ServerAlias www.site1.dev
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
<Directory "C:/websites/www/site1">
AllowOverride All
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
Allow from localhost
Allow from ::1
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Add as many as you require so each of your sites have one, changing the DocumentRoot, ServerName and any other of the parameters as appropriate.
This also allows you to make SITE SPECIFIC changes to the configuration.
NOTE: This will make the wamp manager "Put Online" function no longer have any effect on these new vhost'ed sites as the security for each one is now part of the vhost definition, so leave WAMP, OFFLINE. If you want to put one or more sites online you will have to change the Allow commands MANUALLY in the httpd-vhosts.conf file.
To check your subnet do the following:
Launch a command window, and run
ipconfig
Look for the line "Default Gateway" in the output and use the third number in your Allow commands.
Edit your httpd.conf file and search for these lines, they are near the bottom of the file.
# Virtual hosts
#Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
Remove the '#' comment character on this line to Include your newly changed vhosts, this will cause apache to register their existance.
While still editing your httpd.conf file search for this section of it
onlineoffline tag - don't remove
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Directory>
DO NOT CHANGE THESE LINES!
Add the following after the <\Directory> tag to secure your new C:\websites folder.
<Directory "C:/websites/">
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
Allow from localhost
Allow from ::1
</Directory>
This is to set security on your new directory structure so that access to these new sites is only allowed from 127.0.0.1 (localhost) unless amended from within a specific VHOST.
You can add to this as your requirements change. For example if you want anyone on your subnet to be allowed access to your site(s) you can add `Allow from 192.168.0' to this list assuming you are on subnet 192.168.0, check using 'ipconfig'.
Now in order for your browser to know how to get to these new domain names i.e. site1.dev and site2.dev, we need to tell windows what IP address they are located on. There is a file called HOSTS that is a hangover from the days before Domain Name Servers (DNS) were invented. It is a way of giving nice easy rememberable names to IP address's, which of course is what DNS Servers do for us all now.
Edit your HOSTS file, this can be found in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc , the file does not have an extension. Windows protects this file so you must be an Administrator to be allowed to save changes to this file.
If you are using VISTA or Windows7/8 you may think you are an Administrator BUT YOU ARE NOT!!!!
So to edit this file you must launch your editor, or Notepad in a specific way to gain Administrator rights. To do this find your editors icon and launch it using the following key strokes:
Shift + Right Click over its icon, this will display a menu, click the item "Run as Administrator", and click "Allow" on the challenge dialog that will appear.
Now you are ready to edit the hosts file so navigate your editor to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Add the following lines to this file
127.0.0.1 site1.dev
127.0.0.1 site2.dev
NOTE: You will need to add one line in this file for each of your new virtual hosts.
In order for Apache to pick up these changes you must bounce ( stop and restart ) apache.
Do this by: Wampmanager -> Apache -> Service -> Restart Service
You should now be able to use the address site1.dev in your browser to get to your new sites. Copy your sites code into the "C:/websites/xxxx" folder if you already have a site coded or, place a quick and simple index.php file into the "c:\websites\xxxx" folder to proove it all works.
example:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en-US">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>SITE1</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php
echo '<div style="background-color:red;color;white;text-align:center;font-size:18px">HELLO FROM Site1</div>';
?>
</body>
</html>
TROUBLE SHOOTING:
If you have used the new domain name ( site1.dev ) and it has not found the site.
a. Check the changes to the hosts file.
b. Restart the "DNS Service" that runs in windows. This caches all doman names that you use in a browser so that the browser does not have to query a DNS Server each time you re-use a domain name. This may have cached your failed attempt but a restart is easy and should solve the problem and is quicker that re-booting windows, which should also work.
To do this launch a command window as an Administrator ( Shift + Left Click over the command window icon ) and run these 2 commands.
net stop "DNS Client"
net start "DNS Client"
Note: The quotes are required as there is a space in the services name.
Apparently it was because I tried to change my Wamp directory to something inside Google Drive. This solved my problem: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14444634/458152

Why is WAMP not displaying any of my files? Just showing a blank white page?

I started wamp server and it's only showing blank white pages for all of the files and I am not sure what I should do about it?
It was working before, today I have made no changes to any of the configuration files or anything and there are no error messages being displayed, I've even restated my machine and that didn't change much.
I restart the Apache service and also it's given me an error?
make sure you don't have any file named default.php or index.php, as the server will display them before anything else, and you won't be able to choose files from the tree index.
If that is not the case, wamp's htdocs equivalente in apache's xampp is the www directory folder. Create a folder inside the www directory, say Sites, put some files in there, then run wamp and write http://127.0.0.1/Sites (for this example). You should see the tree directory for your files where you can open them and run your php files.
WAMP didn't run very well in my Windows 7, either, but it does work. Cheers!
Do u use Skype? If so,
Just log out of your Skype and restart wamp server again. after that login your skype again. Never login skype before Wamp server started. The Problem is Server port got conflict with skype.
If you're sure with your server configurations then it is possible that it is just a port conflict.
You need to check what port is being used.
left click wamp manager -> Apache -> httpd.conf
Search for this line
Listen 80
If LISTEN is 8080, your url should be http://127.0.0.1:8080/Sites
OR change the 8080 port to 80 in the httpd.conf
Edit C:\wamp\www\index.php
Set "false" in this line...
$suppress_localhost = false;
In index.php living in the folder www, edit the line
($suppress_localhost?
To
($suppress_localhost==false?
Don't include ; as it will attract errors. Good luck!

Trying to learn ColdFusion but can't access Administrator

I installed WAMP and ColdFusion but when I go to http://localhost/cfide/administrator it gives a 404 error. CFML is displayed fine so the ColdFusion server must be running correctly.
I'm using WAMP ServerVersion 2.2 ColdFusion 9 and Windows 7 64bit.
Both Seybsen and Jason hit on the two most common reasons for not being able to hit the administrator. Seeing as you're on Windows, it's unlikely to be case-sensitivity. But not having index.cfm as a default document will be a problem. You can add it to the http.conf:
<IfModule dir_module>
DirectoryIndex dex index.html index.cfm default.cfm
</IfModule>
If hitting the entire string including index.cfm doesn't work, then it's likely Mark's solution. To elaborate, you'll need to check either the http.conf or the mod_jk.conf to make sure that the alias is there:
Alias /CFIDE "C:\[full path to CFIDE]\CFIDE"
<Directory "C:\[full path to CFIDE]\CFIDE">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
That alias should work for all virtual hosts as well.
Check your httpd.conf file to make sure there is an alias for CFIDE (and remember it's case sensitive). If you still can't make it work try running the connector script for apache found in cfusion9/bin ... or run wsconfig for a gui to try to hook it up. Also remember to run as administrator.
Try your actual ipaddress incase your server settings have not setup localhost by default.
In windows - run CMD or Command Prompt...
Then ipconfig
U should get ur ipaddress...
Replace localhost with that IP address - I have had that problem in the past...
And then create a shortcut with proper address

Use Wamp without having to use projects

So, I love Wamp. It's great for development. The only downside is that in wamp, I have to code everything to use "localhost/projectname/" as a base, but on my actual site, everything has the base of just "/".
Is there a way to use wamp where it treats localhost has your website url?
here's how I'm doing :
I'm editing my httpd.conf file and append a virtual host at
the bottom of it (in the dedicated lines) each time I want to add a
new local website :
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "C:/wamp/www/fake"
ServerName fakesite
</VirtualHost>
And I tell windows to point the local host address (127.0.0.1) from
the hostname that I defined (fakesite in the example):
I'm using windows and I just edit the following file :
X:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and append a new line as
follow : 127.0.0.1 fakesite
note : you'll need to restart wamp after edition config files.
This way and if everything went right you'll just need to type fakesite/xxx to reach the following physical folder : c:/wamp/www/fake/xxx
Can't you use VirtualBox to set up a real server, use apache vhosts to set a fake domain and edit your windows hosts file to point to your local server?
When I do that, I set up samba shares so I can still use Windows to edit my files, then hit "save" in the editor and just refresh the browser. Works like a charm.