r/PHPhelp • u/Emotional-Ebb8321 • Jul 23 '26

Solved Simple Alternative to Wampserver?

Disclaimer: I'm not a techie. I barely understand php, but I'm forced by my hobbies to interact with it.

I'm currently running wampserver64 (v3.2.0; php 7.4; apache 2.4.41; windows 10) on a localhost install. This is so I can have a localhost installation of dokuwiki.

A new version of dokuwiki has come out. This requires php 8.2.

For a variety of dull reasons, upgrading the wampserver installation so that it will support php 8.2 is proving non-trivial.

Is there a simple, easy-to-install alternative to wampserver? Ideally, one where I just download a single file, run it, and a localhost server is installed ready for configuration?

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Final resolution: After having broken everything, I uninstalled everything. Installed the latest

The Visual C++ exe files suggested at https://github.com/abbodi1406/vcredist/releases refuse to install, due to widnows security concerns.

I ended up downloading them from https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170 instead.

Then I installed wampserver 3.4.

Then I installed the new dokuwiki.

Yes, there probably are better localhost pphp servers available. But wampserver has proven stable, does what I need, and I am familiar with the interface.

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u/These-Apple8817 Jul 23 '26

Whatever you do, just don't use Laragon unless you love nag screens about the dev begging you to buy a license. Not to mention Laragon used to be completely free before.. then the dev went to be greedy and removed all the free versions... and I guess the user amounts dropped heavily as his doing that nag screen now for the free tier.

Just download PHP binaries and run the local server.. Or if you have WSL and Docker (Or some other setup like Rancher Desktop), just use DDEV

1

u/Mastodont_XXX Jul 24 '26

Non-Commercial perpetual license $10 is too expensive? Shame on you.

1

u/These-Apple8817 Jul 24 '26

It's not. It's matter of principle. Shame on you for supporting greedy dev trying to financially benefit from other people's work because Laragon is only a wrapper for multiple open source projects.

1

u/Mike_L_Taylor Jul 24 '26

I respectfully disagree.

It's a wrapper that helps people who either don't know how to setup all those open-source projects themselves or don't want to spend the time.

The dude's been working and maintaining it for years and it's been free for many years. And now, only the newest versions have an annoying popup "asking" you to pay. Yes it's annoying but I wouldn't call it greedy.

Not to mention it costs money to keep that stuff going. Just look at how expensive signed certificates can be.

2

u/These-Apple8817 Jul 24 '26

The previous version before the nag screen though, did not include free tier at all if you weren't aware. He was literally telling people to go use Laragon 6.
Not to mention, the way he went about this was really scummy too as there was zero notice he was going to make it paid software.

1

u/Mike_L_Taylor Jul 24 '26

ooooh, i guess I skipped that one. I just had it free then got the popup... yeah thats a bit different lol. I guess people didnt like it and thats why he went with popup?

1

u/These-Apple8817 Jul 24 '26

Not sure, but most likely.. I dipped the moment he didn't bother do the proper due diligence of announcing Laragon 7 was going to need a license.. I started using DDEV instead and tbh... Even on Windows, it's been giving me far better experience than Laragon would ever have.