There are a lot of things to love about XAMPP, but the update process is not one of them. There’s nothing automatic about it, and you can go ahead and plan on hitting a few bumps along the way.

You might be asking yourself, “Why not just follow the official documentation”? And that’s a very reasonable question. XAMPP is a community-driven project. As such, it doesn’t have corporate backing and plenty of financing. One of the byproducts of this arrangement is that things you would expect a commercial project to offer – such as detailed documentation – aren’t available for XAMPP. Go looking for official documentation on how to upgrade to the latest version of XAMPP and you won’t find any.

Support for XAMPP is limited to the community forums and a brief FAQ at the Apache Friends website. If you search for “update XAMPP” what you’ll find is a smattering of hits at the XAMPP forum and StackOverflow offering suggestions ranging from “just install the new version over the older one” (please don’t try this!) to “you can’t update without losing everything” and every possible answer in between.

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Process Overview

Step 1: Backup Website Files
Step 2: Export Databases
Step 3: Uninstall the Old Version of XAMPP
Step 4: Install the New Version of XAMPP
Step 5: Adjust PHP Settings
Step 6: Restore Your Website Files and Databases
Importing Multiple Databases Simultaneously
Importing Individual Databases