How to Install the Drupal AMP Stack from Acquia

In web application development, a local development environment is built for programmers to develop and test their code before it goes ‘live’. This step is done to make sure everything is working properly before any visitor can see it as to avoid any unforeseen issues or errors.

Drupal runs on an AMP (Apache + MySQL + PHP) stack and has sometimes given newbies fits in trying to get all those pieces installed correctly with various installer packages such as MAMP, WAMP, or even XAMPP.

A new AMP stack installer called DAMP by Acquia has proven to be more stable and overall better than the others.

The main advantages of DAMP:

1. DAMP is much smaller (32MB) than MAMP/WAMP (160MB).
2. Hosts multiple sites.
3. Easier to access configuration and log files.
4. Good online documentation.

I wrote up a lesson (.pdf) on how to download, install and setup the Aquia DAMP on your PC.