Long story short. I had Apache / Perl installed on Win XP. All I had to do to run sites was switch on Apache, convert the "host.sam" file to "hosts", and I was away.
Tried that on "Windows 7", and ran into all sorts of problems, so switched to XAMPP.
I'm up and running with that - if not correctly - so wondered if anyone can give me a few pointers.
Now my offline test server site names are the same as the online sites, and the only way around it so far was the "drivers/etc/host" file with the names listed as DNS:
127.0.0.2 http://www.zippi-download
127.0.0.3 http://www.web20sitemakerpro.com
and so on for 22 sites.
These same sites are also set up in "vhost" conf file
With apache server on, and file named as "host", it loads the offline development sites.
When I switch off apache, I have to rename the "hosts" file to "hosts.sam", and then I can access those same sites offline.
So double question:Is this the correct method, or is there a simpler way? Ditto: can I get the Xampp control interface to run an extra batch file to implement the host file renames? (Tried adding dos commands to the "apache-start.bat" and "apache-stop.bat", but they don't seem to make any difference)
Next "problem"
My online server uses "usr/bin/perl" as the shebang, whereas the installation uses "C:/xampp/perl/bin" or similar. I've read that I should not move the standard installation folder as it would make updates harder. I did some research, and I THINK I can get the interpreter to execute from the differnt folder by creating a 'symlink(?)', but what code to use, or where to put it, I don't know
Anyone able to shed any light?