If you are looking a ready made solution to deploy a free vitual store, various server side applications are available for all operating systems. Many of e-commerce applications made in PHP (usually with MySQL database support) are free to use and customize.

Magento is a new e-commerce application type created with PHP and having a MySQL database as backend. It provides compatibility with Unix operating systems and Windows. In order to easily deploy a virtual store on Windows by using Magento, you will need an Apache web server 1.x or 2.x, PHP 5.2.0 and MySQL 4.1.20 or a later version. You can find useful information in a previous article regarding the installation of Apache, PHP and MySQL with the help of WAMP software.

Assuming that you will use WAMP web server, first you will have to download Magento, extract the archive content into the wwwdirectory and then, by selecting Localhost from WAMP server menu, you will be able to begin the Magento installation. The next step is to create a MySQL database which you can do with phpMyAdmin script, also available to be accessed in your WAMP menu.

In the preliminary phase of Magento installation, localization parameters, you must specify the locale settings for locale, time zone and default currency. In the next step, the automatic installer will download Magento core modules and updates, and the next installation screen will prompt you to specify the MySQL database related parameters and default Magento installation paths. Even if you do not have Apache mod_rewrite enabled, the Magento application will still work.

After you specify the administrator login details, you will be able to begin your store configuration. In order to optimize your Magento installation it is recommended to install APC (Alternative PHP Cache) which stores PHP pages in RAM and reduces hard disk activity.