Best Local Host for Joomla?

[AndyInSpain]

Hi guys, I would appreciate some advice.

I have been building a Joomla site to run under localhost (Win 11) since 2017. So far, it's around 1.3TB in size. It was never intended as a test site to be mounted on an internet host later: it's always been intended to run locally. It's actually an educational tool which I hope my daughter will use when she's older, which I wanted to build with a web interface so she'd be familiar with how to use it.

The site has been running under Xampp 7, MySQL and Apache., with Joomla version 3.10.0.

But this configuration is showing its age, and is unstable. Xampp cannot easily be upgraded. Even trying to upgrade the php version failed. For the past month or so, I can run the site once but when I try to run it again, there is some SQL corruption and I have to restore the site from a backup (which takes 6 or 7 hours). Running Xampp as Administrator, which many web sources state is a possible solution to avoid the corruption, does not work.

So I am looking for another way to host the Joomla site locally. I tried wamp, which looked a big improvement over Xampp, but I could not get Localhost to start. Even the helpful guys on the wamp forums could not solve that one, so I gave up with wamp. It's shame, because it looked great.

I am therefore looking for another environment for running localhost with php, Apache and mysql. Ideally,

1. It should allow me to migrate the Joomla site over to it easily, with clear instructions
2. It should enable itself, Apache and php to be upgraded easily, as new versions are released

Can anybody suggest a product that fits the bill? I'd be very grateful for any help or advice with this one. I've worked on this Joomla site for six years and want it to last well into the future.I would be more than happy to upgrade to Joomla 4 when I have a way of updating the site's php version, which is nearly 4 years old.

Many thanks

Andy.

[Maradona]

Are you using Akeeba Backup? Interesting to know how Akeeba perform on that 1.3TB

[AndyInSpain]

I did use Akeeba backup when I aimed to move to Wamp. It seemed to create the backup (in 926 files!) without problem. It took hours, obviously.

I never got as far as trying to restore the backup, though. But there were no errors when I created it, so I assume all was OK.

Thanks!

[AMurray]

I'd use WAMPServer because with XAMPP you're limited to one PHP version. With WAMP you can install additional modules, such as updates to PHPMyAdmin, PHP versions, MySQL and Apache versions - all as self-extracting, self-installing modules and can swap on the fly, and all the program does is restart the services to apply the changes.

The backup shouldn't take "hours". My sites are 300MB+ in size and backup in minutes. The way around a large site backup - get Akeeba Backup Pro that allows you to save in smaller 'part' files say 5MB - 10MB (while that still may take some time, they are easier to manage chunks.

Also are you sure you're not including previous backups within each backup - the /backups folder is one to exclude. Also with Akeeba Pro you can set it to save the archive to the cloud like OneDrive, Google or Amazon or anything similar, so as not to use up your webhosting space. (considering you say your backup is 1.2 TB - my entire webspace allocation is 40GB!)

Here's Joomla's documentation for moving or copying a website e.g. from live to local, or local to live:
https://docs.joomla.org/Copying_a_Joomla_website

[pe7er]

Like AMurray wrote, creating local backups should not be that slow.
Do you have a harddrive or SSD?
How many storage space do you have left?
How can your site be so 1.3TB big?

You could consider to use Akeeba Backup, create a profile where you exclude the /images/ folder.
And then create the backup and copy + paste the /image/ folder to your new site manually.


PS: "the best local host" would be different for everybody
I develop Joomla website locally using "docker containers" for Apache, PHP and MySQL that I deploy using "docker compose". For me it's the best local host because of its flexibility (using different PHP versions, MySQL or MariaDB etc). I understand that for other people it might be too technical so then a XAMP (WAMP, MAMP) like solution would be better.

[AndyInSpain]

I'd use WAMPServer because with XAMPP you're limited to one PHP version. With WAMP you can install additional modules, such as updates to PHPMyAdmin, PHP versions, MySQL and Apache versions - all as self-extracting, self-i

Hello, and thanks for your reply.

As I said in my post, I had already identified WAMP as the direction to go in, but I could not get it to work. Attempting to access the WAMP homepage through localhost always generated an "Access Denied" message...even though accessing PHPMyAdmin worked fine! I worked with one of the Admins on the WAMP forum to resolve this, but having tried a host of different things, even he had to give up in the end.

Many thanks for your help.

Andy.

[AndyInSpain]

Like AMurray wrote, creating local backups should not be that slow.
Do you have a harddrive or SSD?
How many storage space do you have left?
How can your site be so 1.3TB big?

Hello, and thanks for your reply!

I have a WD USB3.0 HD, on which there is about 1.7 TB free space.
The site is so large because it contains around 4.5 thousand videos and 7000 images.

Thanks for your suggestions!

Andy.

[gws]

USB HD's will always be slower.

[AndyInSpain]

Yes, but a 2TB SSD will always be very expensive.

[CompuKing]

in my experience I can say that local host for Joomla development is Apache Server with PHP and MySQL can be best

[AndyInSpain]

Thanks for that!

[AMurray]

Those server packages already mentioned are Apache, MySQL (and PostregSQL and Maria DB) and PHP. They just install the components for you, handy if you're not a server admin.

[toivo]

Attempting to access the WAMP homepage through localhost always generated an "Access Denied" message...even though accessing PHPMyAdmin worked fine!

About your topic at the Wampserver Forum: Wampserver 3.3.1 - 64bit works all right in Windows 11. In my test environment, the virtual hosts reside in C:\www instead of D:\Wamp64\www. The Apache file conf/httpd.conf refers to conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf, where a typical entry looks like this:

Code: Select all

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName joomla4test
  ServerAlias joomla4test
  DocumentRoot "c:/www/joomla4test"
  <Directory "c:/www/joomla4test">
    Options +Indexes +Includes +FollowSymLinks +MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Require local
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

[ascan]

One option you might want to consider is using Docker to host your Joomla site locally. Docker allows you to create a self-contained environment for your web application that can be easily moved between different systems, and it provides a way to manage dependencies and upgrades more easily than traditional server software.

[Hotdog]

For my local host I use the Joomla package from Bitnami. It is complete and runs in a virtual machine with no interaction with my operating system, Linux Mint. Like ascan pointed out, there is no "set up" of web server software and moving your completed site is as simple as backing it up with Akeeba then restoring it where ever you please.