Simple Installation on Windows

I often get request from people who want to quickly install ChurchInfo on a computer running Windows.  This is a great way to get started and experiment, although the real power of ChurchInfo is best appreciated when it is running on a server and accessed from multiple different computers.  I use this procedure to install ChurchInfo for experimenting or development on a Windows laptop.

I have had good luck hopping back and forth between this stand-alone installation as a real server, simply using phpMyAdmin to back up and restore the database.

Here are the step-by-step instructions:

Install xampp for Windows.  This provides Apache, PHP and MySQL.  I tell it to run Apache and MySQL as services.  There are some compatibility issues with the latest smoking-hot versions of MySQL and PHP, so I recommend using this nicely matured version of xampp:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp/files/XAMPP%20Windows/1.6.7/

Unpack the churchinfo directory from the distribution into the directory C:\xampp\htdocs\churchinfo
Use Firefox to browse to: http://localhost
Click the phpMyAdmin link
Under "Create new database" type "churchinfo" and press Create
Select the Import tab
Press Browse...
Navigate to C:\xampp\htdocs\churchinfo\SQL\Install.sql and choose this file
Press the Go button
Select the Privileges tab
Press Add a new user
Set User name to "churchinfo", Host to "localhost", Password to "churchinfo", Re-type to "churchinfo", the press Go (bottom-right)
Now browse to: http://localhost/churchinfo
Log in with user name "admin", password "churchinfoadmin"
It will ask you to change the password immediately.