After the development of your website, it is important to see how it will work on a real server. But uploading the pages to the host's server after making even a slight change is a very time-consuming exercise.

To counter this issue, there are some softwares that can make your computer work as a Test server.

Installation of IIS Test Server
This is very easy to install but at the same time not recommended by many experts. To install it, all you need to do is to select the Internet Information Service (IIS) option present in the 'Add or Remove Programs' in the control panel of windows. However, a number of versions of Windows don't include IIS. For instance, Windows XP Home does not contain IIS, whereas Windows XP Professional does. Another downside is that it makes the system less secure.

Installation of Apache Test Server
Installation of Apache is difficult as compared to IIS. For installing it in on the windows, take proper care to install the windows installer (MSI)  version. This will make the server run as a service automatically in your system tray.

The next step is to find your Apache configuration file. You can find it in the folder in which Apache is installed and further in a sub folder called 'conf'. In it, look for the file 'httpd.conf' to find a setting called Document Root. Change this to target a location on your hard drive, such as the 'c:/folder'.

Usually, Apache is used after its combination with MySQL and PHP.

To do this, take the following steps:

Download PHP from the Internet. After the installation, find its folder and rename the php.ini-dist file to php.ini. Set the 'doc_root' setting to the same as Apache's.

Add these lines in Apache's httpd.conf:

LoadModule php5_module "c:/php/php5apache2.dll"
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
PHPIniDir "c:/php"

Installation of MySQL is quite easy task as it runs independently on Apache configuration. Download the windows installer version of MySQL from mysql.com/downloads. Accept all the defaults and you are through. Finally, enable MySQL support in PHP.

Visit To Your Server
To view the server as if making a visit over the web, simply open the browser and type in the URL: http://local host; or http:://127.0.0.1. This address refers to the server on that particular computer. A page is displayed which congratulates you for its successful installation. After making changes in your website, simply press the refresh button to view them.