Getting LAMP set up so I can run Wordpress Locally

Question

I am following this tutorial: http://www.wpexplorer.com/locally-install-wordpress-on-ubuntu/ and am running into an error when I try to get my php file showing on Localhost. When I restart my Apache server I get this error:

AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message

I found this answer: Apache error "Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name" and followed the instructions for 13.10 or Newer (I'm running 14.04), but it's not working (still getting the error above).

I have read other questions on the topic but they pretty much all point back to that answer.

Any suggestions on how I can get this fixed so I can get WP up and running locally? I am very new to Ubuntu and so far have only done Ruby development with it.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you just need an easy web server to do local development on your system I would recommend

XAMPP

XAMPP is just a Lamp wrapper with a few extra features including PHP and Apache2. It also makes it really easy to use.

Just follow the instructions for downloading and setting it up on your system then go to

 /opt/lampp 

directory.

In that directory you will find an executable called manager-linux-x64.run (or x32 depending on your system)

run this executable

sudo ./manager-linux-x64.run

That will bring up a dialog box and start all the services which you can customize. By default Apache2 web server defaults to http://localhost:80/

Once you see that all the services have started go to the browser and test out that address.

Finally in the /opt/lampp directly is a folder called /htdocs. This is your locally hosted folder so remove everything that is in this folder (XAMPP demo page likely) and put all your wordpress files here (all PHP, HTML and JavaScript) which will then be hosted and appear at the localhost address above.

You can also make a symlink to the /htdocs directory

sudo ln -s (your source directory here) htdocs

If you do this be sure to remove your htdocs folder first.