Vagrant + Chef + LAMP. At the very the least, the idea is to replace the need for XAMPP on Windows.

• Download and install Git http://git-scm.com/download/win ** When installing, select all of the defaults
• Download Ruby Installer for Windows http://rubyinstaller.org/ †
• Download VirtualBox for windows https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads ‡

• If you run the command ruby -v, you should see a version number printed on the next line
• If not, you will need to add ruby to your path: PATH=$PATH:/c/Ruby193/bin ††
• Try the command ruby -v again. This time, you should see the version number

This should be the easy part. Just run gem install vagrant from the git bash

• In case you haven’t setup git yet, use Github’s page on generating an ssh key and setting up git on your computer: ** https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys ** https://help.github.com/articles/set-up-git

We are not going to necessarily be using Github to host our repo, but their help documentation on git is top-notch.

• From the materia directory (where the git repo lives), cd into the vagrant folder

• Run vagrant up

• At this point, a bunch of commands will run and you will see a lot of output.

• Open notepad as an administrator
• Open the hosts file in C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc/
• Add the following line and save: 192.168.33.10 SITE_NAME ‡‡

At this point, if you navigate from your browser to http://SITE_NAME/, you should see the home page load!

• On a unix envrionment, you can run the command vagrant ssh to ssh into the box (from the vagrant directory). On a Windows machine, however, you have to do it a little differently:
• From the git bash, run the command ssh [email protected] ‡‡
• You will be asked to continue connection. Say yes.
• When prompted for a password, use vagrant

• † When installing Ruby, I chose the most recent version, which was Ruby 1.9.3-p194 at the time of this writing
• ‡ Vagrant recommends VirtualBox versions 4.2.x - 4.0.x
• †† Or wherever the bin folder is located for your Ruby installation
• ‡‡ Your box's IP will depend on what is in the config.vm.network setting in your Vagrantfile