How to change the port numbers on WAMP and stop conflicts with a portable server!!!
To install WAMP on your PC
What is WAMP?
WAMP stands for Windows Apache MySQL Php.
- Windows is your operating system.
- Apache is a server that manages communications between computers on a network including the internet. All websites reside on a server somewhere.
- MySQL is a database to hold the contents of a website. A website is made up of two parts: its database and its programmes such as PHP
- PHP is a programming language. The language resides on the server and the website is written in PHP.
When do we use WAMP?
Anyone who develops websites, including their own blog, is likely to want to install WAMP on their computer. If they don’t use Windows, then they will be looking for LAMP or MAMP.
WAMP is installed in folder on your C:/Wamp.
How do I use WAMP?
To start WAMP up, you go to Start/All Programs/Start WAMP. You may have to give it permission to bypass your firewall.
WAMP has a drop-down (or pop up menu).
You pick “local host” to see a list of websites residing on your WAMP. Pick any of these and the website should appear in your browser (i.e., Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, etc.)
Alternatively, you can go to your browser bar and type “localhost/mywebsite” [without the “”]. If you are a noobe, note that is an alternative to http://www.mywebsite.com.
If WAMP is running, and “mywebsite” exists, then mywebsite will open in your browser.
In short, you are running a private little internet on your computer and you can see your website in your own browser.
How do I install WAMP?
- Download the latest WAMP (first recall whether you have a 64 bit or an older 32 bit machine)
- Follow the instructions
- Have a look at the menu bar and see localhost, phpAdmin, Apache and MySQL.
Build a website
To build your first website, use WindowsExplorer to make a new folder in c:/wamp/www/mynewwebsite.
Check that you can see the folder when you use WAMP’s menu and choose localhost. This folder is still empty and in two steps, you will download into it WordPress or Drupal, or whatever you are using.
First, make a new database for your website by going to phpAdmin. Make a new database and then add yourself again with a new name and password (and name that is not root). Give yourself all privileges.
Now you can download and install something like WordPress into your folder and when it asks for your database, give it your database name, your new user name and your password.
When you return to localhost and select mynewwebsite, you should see your website in your browser.
WAMP won’t run – port in conflict?
You very likely have Skype running on your computer as well. Skype “listens” to the same port as WAMP but listens to another as well.
To resolve the conflict, open Skype and look for the technical settings. Uncheck “listen to port 80” and WAMP will work.
WAMP conflicts with another server on your computer?
You may be running ScholarWriter, for example, on Uniform Server and you will find you have to switch off UniformServer before you run WAMP, and vice versa.
You might also be running Maven with Eclipse to run UseCaseTool (uctool). Maven is also a server.
You might also have a GeoServer running!
You want WAMP to listen to its own distinct port and you also want MySQL to have its own port. We will change the port in WAMP from 80 to 81 and in MySQL from 3306 to 3307.
We will accomplish these changes in this order.
- Edit Apache’s httpd.conf file
- Go to WAMP’s menu and select httpd.conf
- Use find to find localhost and change it to localhost:81
- Save
- Edit c:/wamp/wampmanager.tpl file so the WAMP menu points to localhost:81
- Find http://localhost and change it to http://htttp:localhost:81
- Three instances
- Save
- Edit MySQL my.ini file
- Go back to the menu and follow MySQL to my.ini
- Find 3306 and change it to 3307
- Save
- Edit the phpAdmin config.inc.php file to recognise the 3307 port
- Find the config.php file at c:/wamp/apps/phpadmin…/config.inc.php
- Edit out the first reference to localhost against verbose to leave ‘’ with nothing between them – I don’t know why but until I changed this I couldn’t go from the WAMP menu to phpAdmin
- Change the next reference to localhost to 127.0.0.1 – apparently if that remains as localhost, then the port defaults to 3306
- Change the port from ‘’ to ‘3307’
- Save
- Restart the WAMP server
- Shut down all services
- Exit
- Restart
- And test all the links in the menu
If all is well, you are now directed to both localhost:81 and localhost:81/phpAdmin where you can set up new databases.
Change the port settings on any existing websites
Note that if you already have made a database before you changed the port AND installed a website, then you must change the settings on the website.
For each website, go to c:/wamp/www/websitename/sites/default/settings.php and edit these lines to match the port settings as follows
‘host’ => ‘localhost:81′
‘port’ => ’3307′
Final test
Fire up another server, say a portable website and see if you are able to run two servers on the same PC.
And not least change your password
Your server resides behind your firewall and is not accessible from the internt.
But, just in case, change the password for the user ‘root’
- In PhpAdmin, change the password for user root under Privileges
- Go immediately back to the config.inc.php file and insert the same password in password.
- Reboot your WAMP and just in case you are exposed to the internet, no one should be able to connect to your MySQL without knowing your password.
At last, you should have WAMP running smoothly on port 81 and 3307 while other servers (and Skype) run on other ports. I have deliberately left port 80 and 3306 clear for a portable server that so the defaults are used for users who are likely to have the greatest disinterest in tweaking their system!
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