Gotchas installing Magento 2 on Windows 7

Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP.  November 25, 2015 Magento 2.0 was released and the latest version is 2.1.  Architecturally, Magento employs a MySQL relational database management system, the PHP programming language for the back-end and applies a Model-View-Controller paradigm for the front-end.

I will walk through installing Magento 2.1 Community Edition with sample data on a Windows 7 box through a command-line interface (CLI).

1. Download XAMPP
2. Download Composer
3. Download Magento 2.1.0 CE with Sample Data
4. Extract Magento to /{XAMPP_DIR}/HTDOCS
5. Edit /{XAMPP_DIR}/php/php.ini in a text editor
   1. extension=php_intl.dll

      memory_limit=328M

      max_input_time=300

      max_execution_time=18000

      zlib.output_compression=On

      session.auto_start=Off

      suhosin.session.cryptua = Off

6. Update/change MySQL password
   1. Open XAMPP control panel
   2. Click Shell button to open a command line
   3. type: mysql -u root -p “”
   4. Press ENTER
   5. It will prompt for a password.  If current password is not set, just press ENTER
   6. type: set password for ‘root’@’localhost’=password(‘root’);
   7. Press ENTER and password will be updated to “root”.
7. Update phpMyAdmin with MySQL password change
   1. Open XAMPP control panel
   2. Click Config button under Apache module
   3. Select config.inc.php file
   4. CTRL + F to search for “password”
   5. Add your password inside single empty quotes of: [‘password’] = ”
   6. Start both Apache and MySQL modules in XAMPP control panel
      1. I am running APache on port 81 (HTTP) and 443 (SSL)
      2. I am running MySQL on port 3306 (default)
8. Open up Chrome browser and go to http://localhost:81/phpmyadmin
9. Click New to create a new MySQL database (i.e. magento_demo)
10. Open up a commant prompt and go to /{XAMP_DIR}/htdocs/{MAGENTO_DIR}
11. type: composer install
12. Install Magento 2 and populate database
    1. type: php bin/magento help setup:install
    2. The above command will tell you the required fields
    3. type: php bin/magento setup:install –base-url=http://127.0.0.1:81/magento-ce-2.1.0/ –db-host=localhost –db-name=magento_demo –db-user=root –db-password=root –admin-firstname=christopher –admin-lastname=rudy –admin-email=crudysandiego@yahoo.com –admin-user=crudysandiego –admin-password=tables33 –language=en_US –currency=USD –timezone=America/Los Angeles –use-rewrites=1
    4. Successful install message should be outputted to terminal along with Admin URL (i.e. http://127.0.0.1:81/magento-ce-2.1.0/admin_k5baps)
    5. You can find out the URL to Admin login by going to {XAMPP_DIR}/htdocs/{MAGENT_DIR}/app/etc/env.php
    6. Search for: ‘frontName’ => ” (i.e. ‘frontName’ => ‘admin_k5baps’,)
    7. The options above need to be in this order to install Magento.  Change any option values to your settings
    8. Magento will be installed at: http://127.0.0.1:port/{Magento_DIR} (i.e. http://127.0.0.1:81/magento-ce-2.1.0)
    9. You should see the Magento home page with the URL in above step
    10. Go to http://127.0.0.1:81/magento-ce-2.1.0/admin_k5baps and login to Admin panel with admin user/password to verify you have admin access (i.e. crudysandiego / tables33)