Localhost. Editing a Flashblocks site on your local computer

By default the only way to edit your Flashblocks powered website is to upload to your web server and then login and edit. The following instructions will setup a web server on your local computer so that you may login and edit the local copy of your website directly on your computer and even directly within the Flash authoring environment. XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start. Once Apache and PHP are installed, you will be able to not only view your Flashblocks site on your local computer but you will also be able to login, edit, save and resize images all from your computer.

PC Instructions

  1. Download and install XAMPP from http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
  2. Copy your folder that contains all of your websites flash files, flashblocks folder and include.php file etc. into the XAMPP website root directory. By default this would be C:\xampp\htdocs\
  3. Start the xampp Application from it's install location. By default this would be C:\xampp\xampp_start.exe
  4. Finally open your web browser and navigate to your website. For example: http://localhost/yourSite.html

Mac OS X Instructions

Colin has written up the following series of steps required to get XAMPP localhost running on the Mac OS X.

If you have any problems with these steps, feel free to contact me via colin@isa-media.com for help.
Tip: When you first run the XAMPP Control Panel, Right Click on the XAMPP icon in your dock and choose Keep in Dock and Open at Login (should you wish to run it each time you turn on your Mac).

  1. Download and install XAMPP from http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
  2. Copy your folder that contains all of your websites flash files, flashblocks folder and include.php file etc. into the XAMPP Application folder, via the following: Access your Mac hard drive and go to Applications > xampp > htdocs then paste the folder into here.
  3. Right click on the folder that you just pasted into XAMPP open Get Info. Under Ownership & Permissions towards the bottom of the window, access the drop down details section and change Access for Owner, Group and Others to Read & Write. Now click the Apply to enclosed items... and close the window.
    This is VERY important, otherwise access to your files is forbidden.
  4. Open your flashblocks folder and open the flashblocks_config.xml file. Change the localhost setting to: localhost="http://localhost/" and then save the XML file.
  5. Open the xampp Application via the following: Access your Mac hard drive and go to Applications > xampp and double click on the XAMPP Control Panel. Now open the PHP Version tab at the top of the window that appears, and click on Activate PHP4. A local environment should now be running!
  6. Access your website folder you pasted into the XAMPP Applications folder and publish your website as normal.
  7. Open the website you published in Step 6 and everything should now be working locally!

Setting up Flashblocks for Testing Directly Within the Flash Authoring Environment

If you wish to test your Flashblocks website directly within the Flash authoring environment the you will need to make one change to your Flashblocks ML configuration file.

  1. Open the flashblocks_config.xml file with any text editor. This file is found in your flashblocks directory.
  2. Change the localhost setting to: localhost="http://localhost/" and then save the XML file. Note: If you are placing your Flashblocks powered site into a sub directory of the htdocs directory then you must enter the entire localhost path here. For example: localhost="http://localhost/myWebsite/"