test cms locally before publishing

[zitrone]

Hi everybody,

I would like to test my cms made simple website locally before publishing. - Partly because my provider is so damn slow - I understand that I need a local webserver for it. My computer is running on Microsoft XP. Is there anything you can recommend that is as easy to setup as CMS made simple? Something that is "plug-and-play"? I heard apache is the best solution, but to get it up and running seems too complicated, as I am a newbee.

Thanks in advance.

[tsw]

I dont use windows servers but the word on the forums is that xampp (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html) is a good test environment.

hope this helps

[zitrone]

Thanks a lot. It works very well and the setup is exceptionally easy.

Just as a note for other future users: Shut down Skype during installation/running as it uses the same port as the apache server.
It took me over an hour to figure that it was a port problem and which port is was and which programm was using it. But that has obviously nothing to do with XAMPP, which is a definitely the recommendation in terms of easy setup and usage.

Again: Thank you very much!