WAMP With A Network Drive

Not being the first time that I am a little behind the curve when it comes to cutting edge anythings, I decided that it is time to start considering doing much of the testing that I do on my home PC, with duplications of a client’s site sitting locally.  However, I am not wanting to address the idea of expanding or replacing the forever shrinking internal hard drive that sits lonely inside the composite shell of my computer.  We have a network drive, so by all things holy I should be able to use that!!  At least that is what I thought.

Having little experience of setting up Apache webserver, with the accompaniment of MySQL and PHP (known collectively as WAMP – Window, Apache, MySQL and PHP), I set off on my intrepid adventure.  Installation of WAMP was super easy, a few clicks and bingo!!  Woohoo, happy times!! 🙂

However, when it came to setting up a network drive this is where problems started.  I found that I could modify the httpd.conf which is located on my version of WAMP in the folder: C:wampbinapacheApache2.2.21conf or by clicking the left mouse button on the WAMP icon (in the tray at the bottom of the screen) -> Apache, and there it is, and get it to at least see the network location.  In this example with the address localhost/network/ in the browser address.

Alias /network/ "<network_drive_URI>"
Alias /icons/ "C:/wamp/bin/apache/Apache2.2.21/icons/"
<Directory "C:/wamp/bin/apache/Apache2.2.21/icons">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory "<network_drive_URI>">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

So I patted myself on the back like a victorious fighter that has just fought and won a hand to hand fisticuffs arrangement with a bear!  That battle was over, but like so many situations the war still raged.

I was able to view files that I placed in the directory specified, so the next challenge was in putting a Joomla installation into the directory and running through an install from the ground up.  This has resulted in some very, very involved issues.

Tail between my legs for the time being I have resorted to installing everything to my local hard drive, which is working without issue, WAMP ahoy!

I will return to this tricky conundrum when time and patience allows.

Have you used WAMP with a network drive, and had successful installation of a CMS or ecommerce solution?  Please let us know of any problems that you’ve faced, we’d love to share experiences.

Update *October 2012.

Unaware of making any configuration changes to my WAMP setup, I one day woke up and I was not able to get my localhost working.  After toying with settings and reinstalling the software, all without success I decided that enough was enough and jumped ship to XAMPP.

I like XAMPP, once I got used to the new quirks associated with it.  It has also been painless when I recently shifted to a Mac laptop and as there is XAMPP for Mac, it operates in exactly the same way, no learning curve! 🙂  Yippee!!  I have yet to try the network solution, but when I do, I will write a new article about my experience, which I hope will be better! 🙂