If you’re developing websites, it’s nice to be able to test your code in the privacy of your own computer rather that out in the public internet. In order to do that, you’ll need to install a webserver on your development computer. LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, php) is one of the most common web hosting platforms, so it’s a perfect environment for you to build and test your website code. If you carefully follow these step by step instructions, you’ll have your own LAMP setup running in no time. 

The Ubuntu developers have made it easy to install the LAMP server packages with a single command. Simply open a terminal window and enter the following.

The apt package manager will show all the packages that need to be installed. Hit  to confirm that you want to install them.

You will then be prompted to change the password for the root user on the MySQL database.

Enter the password you want. You’ll be prompted to enter it a second time to confirm.

After you confirm your password, apt will continue to install the rest of the packages.

Congratulations, your LAMP installation is now complete! That was the easy part, now you need to get a few things configured to make your system easy to work with.

Open a web browser and enter the address http://localhost/. You should see a web page that says “It Works!”

Now that you know Apache works, you’ll want to test the php installation. You’ll need to create a file in /var/www called testing.php. Open a terminal and enter:

Enter the following line into the text editor, save the file and exit.

Next, restart Apache with the following terminal command:

Now go back to your web browser and enter the addresshttp://localhost/testing.php/. You should see a page displaying version information for your php installation.

Since I’m installing LAMP for a web development environment, I want the MySQL database to be bound to the localhost IP address. This should be 127.0.0.1 for your system. You can verify it with this terminal command.

You’ll now want to verify that the correct bind address is set up in MySQL’smy.cnf file.

You should see a line that looks like this:

bind-address  = 127.0.0.1

If the IP address doesn’t match the one for your system, you’ll need to edit themy.cnf file to correct it.

You don’t need to install phpMyAdmin, but it’s a much easier way to get in and adjust things in your MySQL database if you’re not familiar with MySQL’s commands. You can install phpMyAdmin from the command line with:

The installation will prompt you to select a web server for automatic configuration.

This is important! Use the space bar on your keyboard to select apache2.Make sure there’s a * next to apache2 like the picture below and then hit.  (Click the picture to enlarge it and see what I’m talking about.)

The next screen will explain some information about database configuration. Hit the  key to move on.

Another screen will come up asking if you want to configure a new database called dbconfig-common.  Since this is a fresh installation, use the  key to select Yes and hit .

You’ll be prompted next to enter the MySQL root password. Enter the MySQL root password that you created earlier, hit  to select Ok and hit .

You’ll then be prompted to enter a MySQL application password for phpmyadmin. You can hit  and a random password will be generated. I chose to use the same password that I used for the root MySQL password.

If you enter your own password, a password confirmation screen will come up. Confirm your password.

Your phpMyAdmin installation and configuration is now complete.

Open your web browser and enter the addresshttp://localhost/phpmyadmin/. You should see a page like this.

You can log in with the username root and the root password that you created earlier.

Congratulations, you’re now ready to start building your local website. If you’re only working on one site you can put all of your files into /var/www.  If you’ll be working on multiple sites you may want to consider some additional Apache configuration to keep things neat and clean on you system.