How to install XAMPP and PhpStorm on Windows 7

XAMPP is a cross-platform PHP web-app development stack for Windows, Linux, Apple Mac OS X and Solaris.

PhpStorm is a commercial cross-platform IDE for developing PHP web applications.

Software Versions

 * Windows 7 Home Premium
 * xamp-win32-1.7.7-VC9
 * PhpStorm 4.0.1

Install PhpStorm

 * Download PhpStorm from JetBrains and install

Install XAMPP with XDebug

 * UAC in Windows 7 (User Access Control) can be left enabled (recommended)


 * Either disable installed programs or services that use TCP Port 80 (e.g., MS IIS, Skype, ...) or configure XAMPP Apache to use an alternate port (e.g., 8080)


 * Download the zip/7zip version of XAMPP and
 * extract the files into the root of a drive (e.g., C:\) (the files will be extracted to the xampp\ directory in the root of the drive)
 * run setup_xampp.bat to configure xampp for the directory location it was extracted to
 * browse to the xampp directory using Windows Explorer and right-click on xampp-control-3-beta.exe and add it to the Start menu (the v3 beta control panel includes an xampp shell button, which will give you command line access to PHP, MySQL, etc.)


 * When starting Apache for the first time, accept the proposed change to Windows Firewall (allow access from local network)


 * In order for localhost to be recognized in your browser, edit C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and add add "127.0.0.1 localhost". The editor (e.g., Notepad++) may need to be run as administrator in order to have edit permission on the file.


 * Enable the PHP XDebug module in the [XDebug] section of C:\xampp\php\php.ini (Are you sure you're editing the php.ini file you think you are?)
 * uncomment/edit enable: zend_extension="c:\xampp\php\ext\php_xdebug.dll"
 * uncomment/edit enable: "xdebug.remote_enable = 1"
 * (optional) uncomment/edit enable: xdebug.manual_url = "http://ca.php.net"

Configure PhpStorm with XDebug

 * Click the PHP Listen debug connections button.
 * Allow access for PhpStorm.exe through Windows Firewall (in the Security Alert window that opens)
 * Follow the JetBrains blog post Zero-configuration debugging with XDebug and PhpStorm 2.0