Extras

Enabling GD on XAMPP

When you install XAMPP on a PC, it will install the GD extension. But it is not enabled by default.

You will need to edit the php.ini file so that GD can be used, then restart XAMPP for the change to be recognized.

To edit the php.ini file, open the XAMPP Control Panel, and click on the Config button for the Apache web server. Next, select the php.ini file from the menu. The php.ini file should open in your default text or code editor.

Selecting php.ini from the context menu that appears when the config button for Apache is selected in the XAMPP interface

In the php.ini file, search for the text extension=gd

If the line starts with a semi-colon, remove it (because the semi-colon indicates the rest of the line is a comment). Then save the file.

Screenshot of search box in code editor looking for extension=gd in the php.ini file

Once the php.ini file has been changed, you will need to restart the web server for those changes to take effect.

To check that it is running, you can use the phpinfo() function, and then look for the heading "gd". The first line should indicate that "GD Support" is enabled.