herb miller

My custom WAMP configuration for local development of WordPress plugins and themes.

Currently

• Windows 11
• Apache server 2.4.37 (Win64)
• MySQL Community Server (GPL) 8.0.13 for Win64 (x86_64)
• PHP 8.0.2

Also, phpMyAdmin 5.1.1

Configuration

Domains and subdomains

Most of my local development sites are accessed as installations in a host called s.b. I prefer this to using localhost or the IP address 127.0.0.1

Some other domains and subdomains are defined in my hosts file ( c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts )

127.0.0.1 s.b           # Note: for COMPUTERNAME=SB
127.0.0.1 www.s.b      

127.0.0.1 wp.a2z        # local wp-a2z.org - WordPress bundled plugins and themes
127.0.0.1 www.wp.a2z   
127.0.0.1 core.wp.a2z   # local core.wp-a2z.org - WordPress core only
127.0.0.1 blocks.wp.a2z # local blocks.wp-a2z.org - Blocks & FSE themes reference

Apache setup

• Apache 2.4 is actually installed in C:/apache24
• Document root: C:/apache/htdocs
• Document root contents:
  • Subdirectories: are one per project, each with its own WordPress installation and MySQL database.
  • The primary development folder is the imaginatively named wordpress
  • Some folders don’t contain WordPress eg bw
• PHP 8 is configured to load from C:/php, the php_module being "C:/php/php8apache2_4.dll"

Virtual hosts – extras/httpd-vhosts.conf

I have more than one virtual host. The main one is for s.b with port 80 for http: and 443 configured for https: Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

<VirtualHost *:443>
	DocumentRoot "C:/apache/htdocs"
	ServerName s.b
	ServerAlias www.s.b
	SSLEngine on
        SSLCertificateFile "c:/Apache24/conf/s.b.crt"
        SSLCertificateKeyFile "c:/Apache24/conf/s.b.key"
</VirtualHost>

s.b.crt is the certificate and s.b.key is the RSA private key.

My SSL certificates were created by following Deliciousbrain’s instruction video to Create Your Own SSL Certificate Authority for Local HTTPS Development for Windows.

WordPress installations

Some of the WordPress installations are standard WordPress installs. Others are clones of WP-a2z ( bobbingwide/wp-a2z) which is WordPress core without wp-content, ie It’s a git repository containing all versions of WordPress since version 4.5, but without plugins or themes. This makes it easy to revert to earlier versions of WordPress, if required for debugging.

WordPress configuration file wp-config.php

In each WordPress installation the wp-config.php file is different from the live site:

For more information about the wp-config.php file see WordPress Developer Resources wp-config.php and Developer’s Advanced Guide to wp-config

WordPress.htaccess file

Another file that’s different from the live site is the .htaccess file in each installation’s main folder. It’s this file that enables the magic of permalinks.

# BEGIN WordPress
# The directives (lines) between "BEGIN WordPress" and "END WordPress" are
# dynamically generated, and should only be modified via WordPress filters.
# Any changes to the directives between these markers will be overwritten.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule .* - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization}]
RewriteBase /wordpress/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /wordpress/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

This file may also contain directives added by performance optimization, caching and other plugins.

# compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
</IfModule>

## EXPIRES CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year"
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES CACHING ##

# BEGIN Far Future Expiration Plugin
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive on
<FilesMatch "\.(gif|jpeg|jpg|png|ico|js|css|swf)$">
ExpiresDefault "access 1 year"
</FilesMatch>
</IfModule>
# END Far Future Expiration Plugin

For more information about the main .htaccess file for WordPress see WordPress Support .htaccess

Plugins and themes

In the wordpress subdirectory each of my own plugins and themes is a separate Git repository.

The bundled plugins and themes, and the plugins catalogued in WP-a2z are also Git repositories. Other plugins and themes have been downloaded from wordpress.org or other sites.

In the other environments many of the plugins and themes are symlinked to the wordpress environment.

cd \apache\htdocs\wp-a2z\wp-content\plugins
mklink /J oik-privacy-policy C:\apache\htdocs\wordpress\wp-content\plugins\oik-privacy-policy

PHP configuration php.ini

date.timezone = 'UTC'
max_execution_time = 121

See also

My local WordPress development environment

• WordPress plugins
• Local development
  • JetBrains PHP Storm 7.1.3
  • JetBrains PhpStorm 8.0.3
  • JetBrains PhpStorm 9.0
  • JetBrains PhpStorm 10.0
  • JetBrains PhpStorm 2016.2 -> 2016.3.2
  • JetBrains PhpStorm 2018.3
• Server environments
• Development hardware
• WAMP configuration
• Tools and languages
  • Tools I no longer use
• Version control
• What’s not in my development environment?
• Anything else in your development toolkit?