Easily Upgrade phpMyAdmin For Wamp Server In Localhost To Any Version

If you are PHP developer and use phpMyAdmin, then you know how exciting and important it could be to harness all the latest features that phpMyAdmin includes in its releases. So the question arises now. If you wish to use all the latest features, do you know how to upgrade just the phpMyAdmin part for Wamp Server in your localhost? If not, this article is just right for you. In this article, I am going to share very easy, simple and step-by-step way (with examples) to upgrade your existing phpMyAdmin version to any version you like.

How To Upgrade phpMyAdmin In Localhost

Before I actually start off with the steps, let me tell you that I am currently using phpmyadmin3.5.1 and I want to upgrade it to phpmyadmin4.0.4.1 (the latest version as of today).  So you might see references of my version of phpMyAdmin, so you might want to swap it out for your version wherever it occurs. So here we go:

1. Go to http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php. Download the latest version & extract to a folder. Make sure that you give out a proper name in smaller case and append it with the version and make sure that all the files are sitting in this folder. So I extracted the files to phpmyadmin4.0.4.1 folder and all my files now reside in this folder and are immediately visible when I open up this folder.

2. Go to the directory in which you have installed wamp in your PC (for example: C:/wamp) and then open up the “apps” folder. So for example, you could find this at: C:/wamp/apps/

Once you access the above path, you will find your current installation of phpMyAdmin. So you may see the path like so: C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1.

Simply copy the newly extracted phpMyAdmin folder to this “apps” folder. So in my case the path for the new phpMyAdmin would like so:  C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1.

3. In your wamp folder, search for a folder that says: “alias”. Then open this folder and open the file called “phpmyadmin.conf”. Alternately, you can open this same file by clicking your wampserver icon in the Windows taskbar, then click Apache->Alias directories->”http://localhost/phpmyadmin/”->Edit alias

4. VERY IMPORTANT: Here you have to find two occurrences of your current installation path of phpMyAdmin and replace the current phpMyAdmin folder name with the folder name of the new phpMyAdmin version. Without these two changes, Wamp would deny you access to phpMyAdmin.

Typically, the first occurrence would be the first line and the second occurrence would be few lines below and will be visible once you scroll down through the visible portion of the file.

So find the line that begins with: Alias /phpmyadmin …(your current phpMyAdmin install path)…

In my example, it would be: Alias /phpmyadmin “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/” 

I would change the above line to: Alias /phpmyadmin “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1/” 

Next, scroll down below until you see the line that starts with: <Directory “…(your install path)…”>

In my example, it would be:  <Directory “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/”>

I would change the above line to:  <Directory “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1/”>

Once both the above changes are done, save the file & exit it.

5. Copy the config.inc.php file from your previous version of phpMyAdmin to your new version. So I copied it from C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/ to C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1/. 

The fresh copy of phpmyadmin4.0.4.1 does not have a default config.inc.php file. Rather it has a config.sample.inc.php that you can rename & modify to suit your requirements (if you are really comfortable with editing the file directly or if you are installing phpMyAdmin for the first time). If upgrading from a previous version, then simply copy the config.inc.php and you are good to go. BTW, this confic.inc.php file that you are copying, contains your username and password that you use to login to phpMyAdmin, so you might want to use this file without fail to make this upgrade process as seamless as possible.

6. Last step, finally! Left click Wamp icon in Windows taskbar and select Restart All services. That’s it!

Visit phpMyAdmin as you would normally do (In my case, the URL is : http://localhost/phpmyadmin/)  and if everything went correctly, you should see the latest version of phpMyAdmin!  Enjoy!

Your Turn!

What do you think of the above way to upgrade phpMyAdmin in Localhost for Wamp Server in Windows? Were you able to upgrade your version of phpMyAdmin successfully? Feel free to share your results and views by commenting below.