ANTH040 wrote:I've now set-up my current vBulletin site and moved it to xampp on my local drive which also went fine my problems are since the move.
Normally you just can't move or copy a hosted forum (or any hosted complex script) complete and expect it to work an an XAMPP installation.
This also applies if you try and move or copy a forum script initially installed in XAMPP to a hosted service for very much the same reasons.
This is caused by Linux type paths and settings not being compatible with those in an XAMPP installation - the DocumentRoot for example is different in XAMPP compared to your hosted installation.
In my experience and therefore my advise if you want to use XAMPP for developing your VB is to install VB from a download from VB and create your database using phpMyAdmin.
Then when you have it working in XAMPP go to your hosted VB and export your data from the database using phpMyAdmin and import that data into your XAMPP instance of VB using the phpMyAdmin included in XAMPP.
IMHO, the security settings in XAMPP will not affect your running of VB locally.
You would need to take extensively more security precautions if you decided to open your VB to the public from your local XAMPP server PC and it is this that is not recommended as XAMPP is really not suited as pointed out with an alternate link in Altrea's signature.