Installing with XAMPP

As I mentioned earlier, installing and configuring all of the different server programs so they run together properly can be very difficult. Unless you're an accomplished system administrator, you may want to take a shortcut with XAMPP. Known as the "lazy man's installer," XAMPP combines all of the primary web server applications (Apache, PHP, and MySQL) into a single installation binary.

The XAMPP package was created to ensure that all server versions in the installer are compatible with each other and properly configured to work together. The "X" in XAMPP stands for the variety of operating systems for which this superinstaller is available (such as WAMPP for Windows, LAMPP for Linux, etc.). The other letters of the acronym stand for Apache MySQL PHP Perl. Although Joomla doesn't need Perl for execution, it won't interfere with Joomla functionality.