Multisite on localhost using xampp

Question

I'm having some trouble getting Multisite to work on my localhost using xampp. I have the main site in a subfolder so the path would be http://localhost/my_site/.

I'm getting two different errors, either "Error Establishing Connections with Datatbase" or "too many redirects". Below is my current htaccess and wp-config setup. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong:

wp-config.php

/* Multisite */
define('MULTISITE', true);
define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false);
define('DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'localhost/my_site');
define('PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/');
define('SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1);
define('BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1);

.htaccess

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*\.php)$ $2 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPresss

Answer 1

There is actually nothing unique about setting multisite on XAMPP, all you need to do is properly configure the webserver as a proper webserver, and skip the lazy practice of using localhost as your site domain.

Select some random domain you are not likely to use in your web use, edit your hosts file to point that domain to 127.0.0.1, and set the vhost in the appache configuration. Once done you should not have any problem to setup wordpress and multisite.