I'm writing this in the hope that one or more aggressive WordPress plugin developers will see it and turn my dreams into reality. I have written about optimizing AdSense in the past, but I don't want to go back into those articles to point out relative information.

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I'm working on a programming project as the sole developer of a browser-based software application. I've dubbed it "PHPText Blogger" as a working name because it's only using PHP and text files formatted specifically for this application.

In order to use this browser-based application on Windows or Linux, I only need to have a web server installed which includes the PHP software. I'm using XAMPP for Windows right now.

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I'm as guilty as anyone. I failed to create a sandbox version of my blog on my own PC and I've paid for it over and over again. If you create a sandbox version on your own PC, you can save yourself a ton of headaches with themes, plugins and whole lot more.

How hard is it? It's not hard at all if you use the right software and services. The software titles you need are those that most closely match the software your web host is using, and the closest version number:

• A free and easy web server to administer. This doesn't have to match your web host. Apache is used by web hosts quite a bit, but is daunting for someone who's not familiar with its many configuration options. If your PC runs on Windows, I recommend the Abyss Web Server. It has an easy to use GUI and it's free. They have an affordable paid version for more functionality if you need more. I do not.
• PHP. It's not hard to set up on a PC at all. You just have to remember that whenever you make a change to the configuration, you have to restart the web server for the changes to take effect.
• MySQL. Dig through the site. There's a GUI there that helps you to administer this database server on your PC. As an alternative, install and use phpMyAdmin just like a lot of web hosts do.

What? You thought there were more? No, those are the only software titles you need except for the current version of WordPress (but you already that). With this software on your PC, you can access your sandbox version (after the services have been started of course) by typing http://localhost in your browser's address bar. If you want to see what it looks like to the real world, sign up for a free domain name from No-IP or services like it.

(Update 2007-07-29: I created A New Sandbox Setup For WordPress. I started having issues with the way it was setup until today.)