I’m a masochist at heart.
I used to install everything, bit by bit, configure, test, tweak … until I had a complete WAMP localhost development server. The 4 cornerstones: Apache, mySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, and even ActivePerl.
Then there were the upgrades. Hours and hours of tedious fun.
After a while, the fun factor began to wear rather thin. By the time Apache 2.2 and PHP5 were out, I’d had enough.
Also, the whole shebang was pretty slow. Working with WordPress and a collection of themes, the lag in execution was approaching snail pace. It was faster working online, on my webhost server.
I had never been a fan of WAMP kits. They were usually ugly to install, never worked just right; even caused problems. I was a DIY woman, after all, and proud of it!
Well, no longer. I actually have work to do, and would also like to take the dogs out for their walks.
I looked at XAMPP, and it was pretty good, but still didn’t convince me entirely.
Then I discovered the UniServer – and you know when it’s love at first sight. Version 3.2 worked out of the box for me; and the current 3.3 does so too (both on the laptop and the desktop).
The Uniform Server is incredibly lean, runs much much faster than my painstakingly cobbled-together hand-crafted WAMP system, is simply clever in design … and doesn’t require any installation apart from unzipping the file somewhere!
You can take it with you on a USB flash drive. 
I finally spend time again doing development work locally, and enjoy it. Because I don’t have to even think about localhost. It’s just there and simply works.
Filed under: Servers, Software, Web Development
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