I've exhausted my resources. I could use some help here.
I installed XAMPP successfully on my Windows 7, 64 bit machine. I placed my webpages in C:\xampp\htdocs\mywebsites. I can now use Microsoft Expression Web 4 to modify and Preview my pages. The HTML and PHP pages are working.
Now I want to configure the Apache with an .htaccess file so I can open .html files that have php code in them. Without the .htaccess file, then any pages that have php code must be saved with a .php extention or they won't load correctly when viewed in a web browser. I have a .htaccess file on my Godaddy web server (that uses Apache on linux) that is working so that my previously existing html files can contain php code. I don't want to change all my pages to .php because there may be many links and bookmarks out there to the html pages. I just want to now add more functionality to them with php code. But no matter what I do, I can't seem to get the .htaccess file to work with my local Apache server at all.
I put the local .htaccess file in the C:\xampp directory. It contains the same text as the .htaccess file that I put on Godaddy's web server:
Options +ExecCGI
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .htm .html
AddHandler x-httpd-php5-cgi .php .htm .html
I've tried everything I could find on the web: I went to the host file at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\ and uncommented (took out the #) 127.0.0.1 localhost. I also opened the httpd.conf file and uncommented LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so. I changed Options Indexes FollowSymLinks to Options Includes Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews. I changed all the AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All (perhaps I did not need to do all of them for security reasons). I searched for AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz and added the following line under it: AddType application/x-httpd-php .php. I even opened httpd-xampp.conf and changed all the AllowOverride None to All (I don't know if this is needed). Still the .html and .php pages seem to work. But I still cannot open any .html pages with php code in them.
Any help would be very much appreciated. Thanks.