Using sNews on your computer

All you need to do is install a free application bundle on your computer so it will run like a real, live Apache/MySQL server. It isn’t as complicated as you might think.

There are a few free server bundles available for off-line development. One of the more popular ones is XAMPP, made available by the Friends of Apache. It is available to run with Linux, Windows XP, Solaris and Mac OS X 10.4 (Intel) and higher. As an example, the Windows XP distribution runs on Windows 98, NT, 2000 and XP. It contains: Apache, MySQL, PHP + PEAR, Perl, mod_php, mod_perl, mod_ssl, OpenSSL, phpMyAdmin, Webalizer, Mercury Mail Transport System for Win32 and NetWare Systems v3.32, JpGraph, FileZilla FTP Server, mcrypt, eAccelerator, SQLite, and WEB-DAV + mod_auth_mysql. If you choose to install XAMPP for Windows XP, this tutorial will walk you through the steps.