WAMP Development Tutorial

Development Tools

The following is a list of development tools that will help you a great deal. If you already have your favorites then stay with them, this is a list of my favorites.

FileZilla

Site: http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/
Documentation: http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/documentation/
Download: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=21558 (Newest Version)

FileZilla is a fast FTP client for Windows with a lot of features. FileZilla Server is a reliable FTP server.

WebDrive

Site: http://www.webdrive.com/products/webdrive/index.html
Documentation: http://www.webdrive.com/support/webdrive/webhelp/webdrive.htm
Download: http://www.webdrive.com/download/index.html (Newest Version)

WebDrive is not free, but in my opinion is one of the greatest time saver tools I have for web development. This tool allow you to map a remote FTP drive to your local drive letter. This allows you to edit files live while online. No more download, modify, upload, view, etc..

WebDrive integrates your web or FTP server into the Windows file system by mapping it to a drive letter. This enables you to connect to the server and perform familiar file operations like copy, move, and directory functions with the Windows explorer. Using simple drag and drop, you can transfer individual or multiple files - even entire directory structures. WebDrive offers FTP client functionality that's feature-rich and easy to use.

PuTTY

Site: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/%7Esgtatham/putty/
Documentation: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/%7Esgtatham/putty/docs.html
Download: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/%7Esgtatham/putty/download.html (Newest Version)

PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.

Shell Utils

Download: shell_tools.zip

This is a collection of shell tools that allow you to type unix style commends on your win32 system. While it is allways recommended you use the build in functions of PHP, there are times when you need to make a shell call. These tools will allow the command to run and will preform the task correctly (if applicable), and if not (ex: chmod) will not return an error.

TortoiseCVS

Site: http://www.tortoisecvs.org/
Documentation: http://www.tortoisecvs.org/support.shtml
Download: http://www.tortoisecvs.org/download.shtml (Stable Version)

This software is ONLY valuable if you are developing using a CVS server.

TortoiseCVS is an extension for Microsoft Windows Explorer that makes using CVS fun and easy. Features include: coloured icons, tight integration with SSH, and context-menu interactivity.

7-Zip

Site: http://www.7-zip.org/
Documentation: http://www.7-zip.org/support.html
Download: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html (7-Zip for Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP)

I do not use this program, I use WinZip but this is a free product so I am listing it.

7-Zip is a file archiver with the highest compression ratio. The program supports 7z, ZIP, RAR, CAB, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR formats. Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format. 7-Zip has powerful command line version.