How to install Phoenix on a WAMP server

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ArtcoInc
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How to install Phoenix on a WAMP server

Post by ArtcoInc »

If you are having troubles installing Phoenix on a WAMP server, here are two things to check ...

Starting with Phoenix 1.0.8.x, the developers switched from a MYISAM engine in mySQL to a InnoDB engine. This is a 'behind-the-scenes' change, but may give you problems if your WAMP server is not configured correctly.

If your installation of WAMP uses the MYISAM engine by default (mine did), you can change it several ways ...

1) In your WAMP console, click on 'MySQL'. Click on 'my.ini'.
Screen Capture - 07-16-2025 - C.jpg
This should open your my.ini file with your default text editor ...

Scroll down to the 'default_storage_engine' entry. Comment out the MYISAM entry (add a semi-colon in front of the line), and un-comment the InnoDB entry (remove the semi-colon in front of the line). Save the file.
Screen Capture - 07-16-2025 - D.jpg
Now, 'Restart All Services'
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-or -

2) In your WAMP console, click on 'MySQL'. Click on 'MySQL Settings'. Now, click on 'Default Storage Engine'. Select 'InnoDB'.
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All services will restart.

-or-

3) You can edit the sql file in the Phoenix installation. From your store root directory, change to ''install' directory. Open the file 'phoenix.sql' with your favorite text editor (I like Notepad ++). There will be many 'Create Table' entries. At the bottom of each entry, there is a line:

Code: Select all

CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
Change this to:

Code: Select all

ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
for ALL of the entries. You can use your file editor's "find and replace" function. Review all of your edits for mistakes, and save the file.

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Once you have configured your WAMP server to use the InnoDB engine, there is one more setting you have to check ...

From the WAMP console, click on 'MySQL'. Click on 'MySQL Settings'. If the 'innodb_default_row_format' is not 'dynamic', click on it, and select 'dynamic'.
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Your services will restart.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

These two settings should enable you to now install and run Phoenix on your WAMP server.

Malcolm
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ArtcoInc
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Re: How to install Phoenix on a WAMP server

Post by ArtcoInc »

Step 2:

After you get Phoenix installed, there are some WAMP specific things you need to configure.

Phoenix needs to be able to send emails from both the store side, and the Admin side. Windows does not typically have a mail server installed. So, unless you are already running an actual, full-blown mail server on your Windows machine, we will need to configure a simple mail server that will forward the email to your ISP. Your ISP will then forward the mail on to where it needs to go.

1) You will need to know the settings you normally use to send email. This will include the mail server name your ISP uses, the Port number, your user name, and user password. You can usually find this in the email client you use. Write these down.

(If all you use is a web based GMail account, you may need to contact your ISP to get the necessary information.)

2) Now, we are going to download the mail server (see notes at the bottom of this post)

Go to: https://www.tutorials24x7.com/php/how-t ... -using-php

Scroll down to where it says "Install and Configure Sendmail:

Click on the 'Download' link.
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This will download a file called 'sendmail.zip'. This is version v32 of Sendmail (see notes below). Open the ZIP file.

We are going to copy all of the contents of this file onto your WAMP server.

3) On your WAMP server, go to your root directory (typically C:), and create a sub-directory called 'sendmail' (C:\Sendmail).

4) Copy the contents of your 'Sendmail.zip' file into the sub-directory you just made.

5) Once the files have been copied, you will need to edit one file. Open 'sendmail.ini' with your favorite text editor (I'm using Notepad here):
Screen Capture - 07-29-2025 - A.jpg
5a) Change the smtp_server line (1) to the name of your mail server, as noted above.
5b) Change the smpt_port line (2) to the port number, as noted above
5c) Change the auth_username line (3) to your user name, as noted above
5d) Change the auth_password line (4) to your password, as noted above

6) Save this file.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Next, we need to tell your WAMP server where to find your mail server (Sendmail). You set this in your PHP.ini file, BUT which one?

(I spent a lot of time fighting this. Earlier versions of Phoenix had a report in Admin with a more complete 'Server Info' page, but this has been reduced in newer releases, So, here's how to do it manually ...)

We're going to create a simple web page. Open your favorite text editor, and copy this into it:

Code: Select all

<?php
phpinfo();
?>
Name this file 'info.php' (it MUST have the .php extension!), and save this file into the root directory of your WAMP server. This will typically be either "C:\wamp\www\" or "C:\wamp64\www\".

Now, open a browser, and go to "localhost\info.php". It should look something like this (yes, I'm using an old version of PHP here) ...
Screen Capture - 07-29-2025 - C.jpg
(if nothing comes up, make sure that you have your WAMP services running)

Take note of the file name and path circled. Your path may be different.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Navigate to that directory, and open that file with your favorite text editor. We're looking for the "sendmail_path" entry. Change this to match where you installed sendmail (in my example, it's "C:\sendmail\")
Screen Capture - 07-29-2025 - B.jpg
Save the file.

Restart all of your WAMP services.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Now that your WAMP server is configured, let's configure Phoenix.

1) Log into your Admin account

2) In "Admin/Configuration/My Store", set the email address for your store. This is needed to:

2a) Show an email address for your customers to contact you, and

2b) Have a 'From' address in any emails your shop sends out.


3) In "Admin/Configuration/E-Mail Options", make sure your 'E-Mail Transport Method' is set to 'Sendmail'


This should be all you need to be able to send emails from Phoenix on a WAMP server!

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Notes:

1) At the time of this writing, there is a newer version of SendMail (v33) on GitHub. It incorporates changes to force using TLS 1.1 and 1.2 (and not allowing TLS 1.0). However, it didn't work with my ISP. If your ISP requires TLS 1.1 or 1.2, and SendMail v32 doesn't work, you can try this one.

If you go to: https://github.com/sendmail-tls1-2/main

Click on the green 'Code' button, and click on Download ZIP. This will download a file called 'mail-master.zip'.

Open this ZIP file. In it is a folder called 'main-master'. Open it. In that folder, there is another ZIP file. At the time of this writing, it is called 'Sendmail_v33_TLS1_2.zip'. Open it, and copy its contents into your "C:\sendmail\" directory. Continue with the installation as noted above.


2) If you were to Google "Sendmail for Windows", you might be directed to:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/send-mail/

Do NOT download and try to install this. This will NOT do what we need here.
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burt
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Re: How to install Phoenix on a WAMP server

Post by burt »

Thanks for posting this @ArtcoInc - it will be helpful for others in the future.

May I mention, there are more modern options, such as Laragon (version 6 maximum, unless one wants to pay for a license) - Laragon takes very little configuration (I can't remember having to do any, it just worked out of the box).
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