Creating a web site test service on home PC

I'm running XP Pro and want to create a simple local test service so I can test PHP and the like without using al web site on a remote server. As the sites I do have run on Windows servers running IIS I want to emulate that environment.

I've installed IIS 5.1 on my PC and can run it ok.

Clearly I need to download and install PHP. But I'm not sure which variant of the PHP installer I should use. This link seems to be for a simple install but it warns that i's not secure. In what way?

The manual approach would, I assume, be better and safer, but is it really as complex as it seems?

Also, as I do not intend my PC to become a remotely accessible server what should I do to make it 'hidden'?

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

Also, as I do not intend my PC to become a remotely accessible server what should I do to make it 'hidden'?

Are you behind a NAT router - then it is hidden. In IIS you can set bindings so it only reponds to localhost (127.0.0.1) address

I use a Netgear DG834GT router, I note that in the Basic Settings screen NAT is enabled so hopefully that's what you were referring to.

To play safe how do I ensure it only responds to the localhost address ?

I've put a web site in wwwroot and have put a trivial html file in it and have got it responding via http://localhost. Amazing! The site actually uses PHP and I haven't yet installed PHP. That's the next step.

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

I use a Netgear DG834GT router, I note that in the Basic Settings screen NAT is enabled so hopefully that's what you were referring to.

Yes - if anything on the internet trys contacting to the webserver it would require reconfiguring the router to get at PC

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

To play safe how do I ensure it only responds to the localhost address ?

In IIS Manager (Control Panel|Administrative Tools) - in the site's entry (right mouse click on I think) you can edit the bindings (IIS 5 probably only a default )- setting to 127.0.0.1:80 instead of *.80 should limit it to local machine. You can even change it to something like 127.0.0.1:8081 then access it via "http://127.0.0.1:8081" in browsers address bar

The manual approach would, I assume, be better and safer, but is it really as complex as it seems?

If you're hiding IIS to only be visible on the machine it is installed on, as Kenneth suggests, then you don't need to worry about the security angle. If you have more than one computer it might be better to make IIS available on the local subnet rather than just on the one computer.

On the other hand, it's fun to learn so why not have a go at manual installation of PHP?

By default I think Windows Firewall won't allow remote connections to the IIS service (port 80) e.g. the request doesn't actually get as far as IIS before it's blocked as not coming from the loopback address/local host.

If however you did want to allow other machines on your network to access the website on the PC it's running on (though not those from the internet), you'd also need to go into Firewall > Exceptions > World Wide Web Publishing Service (think it's called) and you can then enable it and set scope for the local sub-net only.

Thank you, I did.

After dealing with incomplete ( to me at least ) documentation in the PHP site's installation guides I got it working. I've got it such that the url http://localhost gives me 'my' main web site, index.php being the default document in my sites.

Not sure how - assuming it's possible - to get it to respond correctly to (something like) http://localhost/mysite1 and http://localhost/mysite2 etc. Google'ing around it keeps talking about multiple bindings - possibly what I need - but I cannot find anything in my IIS control panel which even uses the word 'binding' to be able to relate things. Is it for example the same as virtual directories? Or is it that on a non-server OS such as XP Pro it's just not possible, the default web site is the only one that IIS will handle?

I'm using Zone Alarm but I'd guess that's much the same. Not sure whether I need the capability though, I wouldn't use my Netbook in that way.

Can't find anything in IIS 5.1 where port 80 is referred to that either uses the form *.80 or even permits non-numeric characters in the field.

Responding to sites as you describe should just be a question of creating the directories under your root directory and placing index.php documents in each (but I have to say I am not familiar with the details of IIS, being an Apache man). This is not the same as virtual directories; they are a way of linking a directory that is in another location, or even on another disk, seamlessly into the root directory tree. And I am sure that there are no restrictions as to what IIS can do on XP Pro (other than the number of simultaneous clients supported).

If you can't get it to work, and no-one else has any suggestions, I'll load IIS and PHP and have a play. It can be a little tricky getting things configured at first, but once you get it working you wonder what on earth the problem was.