Avalon Greene's Place

Info, reviews and fun stuff!

A few months back I found this place called portableapps.com. This website offers a platform and various applications which can be run from a USB stick. Back in the day I was mostly interested in the XAMPP application. This application is a complete webserver containing Apache, mySQL, PHP and Perl (the AMPP in XAMPP) that all run from a removable drive. Everything is pre-configured and ready to go just by unzipping or installing it.

The full XAMPP package includes:

• Apache
• MySQL
• PHP + PEAR
• MiniPerl
• OpenSSL
• phpMyAdmin
• XAMPP Control Panel
• Webalizer
• Mercury Mail Transport System
• FileZilla FTP Server
• SQLite
• ADODB
• Zend Optimizer
• XAMPP Security

I specially liked this application as you can run and edit websites without the need of a public server with php and/or MySQL.

The Xampp userpanel is easy to use and looks slick. With one press on the button you are able to activate and deactivate a function, or enter the admin panel to change settings.

Now it is nice to run a webserver on your USB stick but thats not all I wanted. I installed the portableapps platform and modded it. This gave me the change to change the layout theme to something I like more. After that I went to install some other applications.

I installed the following applications to use while building websites, or atleast pretend that I can build websites.

• XAMPP, this is used to run the webservers.
• FileZilla Portable, this is used for a ftp connection. Not that this is needed but looked like fun
• GIMP Portable, for the graphic touches.
• Firefox Portable, I just enjoy using firefox so it had to be there.
• Thunderbird Portable, when testing mail scripts and such.
• Nvu Portable, a simple WYSIWYG html/php editor. A mix of Frontpage and Dreamweaver.

Here a little picture of the FileZilla Server window and FileZilla connected.

Well, this is my portable USB webserver. Reactions are welcome. Tips, ideas and what else can be left in comments.