Why is it that setting up Drupal on my local computer using wamp or xamp is nearly impossible. I run into about 9001 problems. I get error message on top of error message. I fix one error and 3 others pop up. Is there some clean way to do this? And why doesn't the download just include everything you need. 30% of the problems were renaming files already included in the download. What sense does it make to set the names to a generic default name, only to have them renamed by the end user for installation purposes. I honestly do not understand that. It appears to be a huge wast of time and causes nothing but untold confusion, at least on my part. Also, I don't understand why there would be errors while you're installing. The installation is asking questions to begin with. Why not simply ask the question via the install to solve the issue. Or, provide a 10 part pre-install instruction guide of everything the installation will need, and run a check on that list via the application itself. Once that list is taken care of, proceed with the install. It cannot be that every tutorial I have seen on the install goes through all of the errors and noone has every thought to fix it. can you tell i'm slightly frustrated? Honestly, i throw my hands up and wait 3 months before doing the process over again. This is my 3rd attempt at installing it, yes that's nearly a year of fooling with this. And I have still not redone my dui website.
It could be that the php run by wamp or xammp is not the right version for drupal. Not only php but other php extensions, setting files, etc as well required by drupal to run. You need to tweak wamp or xammp to meet drupal's requirements. http://drupal.org/requirements . Or just mimic the server of your production site where your drupal site is already running (if you already have one). The easiest way to run a drupal development locally is by using Acquia Drupal. It installs everything for you. You got nothing to configure whatsoever and the setting up of a website takes under a minute using the program interface. You can download it here - http://acquia.com/downloads