Open Server 6.5.0 is the first launch. User's Guide.

Installing Open Server Panel 6.5.0. User Guide 2026 – First Launch on PHP 8.5

A complete, hands‑on installation and configuration guide specifically for the latest OSP 6.5.0 release. How to get your first site running in 2 minutes? Plain language, no command line needed.

This guide is based on the official documentation and the release notes for version 6.5.0 dated January 31, 2026. Above all, it is based on personal experience and has been tested on two different computers running Windows 10 and 11.

Video on YouTube added

Brief Overview and Workflow

1. Open Server Panel 6.5.0 is a complete, ready‑to‑use web development environment for Windows. This version once again ships with phpMyAdmin — it is built right into the local server installation package.

2. phpMyAdmin itself is a web application, so it will serve as our first site. We will use it to walk through the installation, configuration, and initial launch of your very first site running on the latest PHP 8.5.

3. Installing OSP 6.5.0 may take 15 to 30 minutes, depending on your computer's performance. The process is fully automated by the developers and requires no special knowledge from the user.

4. Configuring OSPanel modules and launching a pre‑packaged site without any command‑line knowledge is the most crucial step, yet it only takes 2–3 minutes.

5. Follow this guide step by step, in order, and you are guaranteed to get a site running within the stated time.

This guide contains a fair amount of repetition — the same words or expressions may appear again and again. It might not read like a polished article, but that is deliberate. This is not a piece written for search engine optimization or leisure reading. It is a verified instruction manual whose only purpose is to walk you, like a personal guide, step by step, from launching the installer all the way to opening your first website on the local server.

Step 1. Running the Installer — The Easiest Part

1. Download the installation file open_server_panel_6_5_0_setup.exe from the official website and run it as Administrator.

2. Choose "Full installation" (not "Portable" — I have not tested that mode, and this guide does not cover it).

3. Specify the installation path: C:\OSPanel — make sure it goes to the root of a drive, with no Cyrillic characters or spaces. (Personal tip: you do not have to use drive C:; I actually recommend picking a different local disk, one that does NOT contain your Windows OS. For example, install to D:\OSPanel.)
4. At the "Choose Components" step, as a beginner select "Full installation" — that is, leave everything at the default, everything the developers have preselected. The full OSPanel package will need about 14 GB of free disk space.
5. Agree to all dialog prompts and simply click "Next". At some point you will be offered:
— Create a desktop shortcut;
— Add the program folder to the PATH environment variable;
— Install the root certificate;
Check all three boxes and click "Next".
In the next window click "Install" and wait for the operation to finish.
6. At the end a "Windows Security" warning will appear, asking "Do you want to install this certificate?" — click "Yes"!
7. Immediately after the certificate is installed you will see a prompt: "Launch System Preparation Tool". Check the box and click "Finish"!

The "System Preparation Tool" will now open automatically.

Step 2. System Preparation (Mandatory!)

1. Again, agree to everything and click "Next".
2. Make sure the following options are checked:
— Install Microsoft Visual C++;
— Allow write access to the HOSTS file for all users;
The option "Optimize system settings for SSD" is up to you — I personally never check it.
Click "Next".
3. Wait for the operation to complete, click "Finish", and then you must restart your computer!

That was the easiest and most time‑consuming part of installing OSP v.6.5.0 — and we are done with it. Now let's move on to the most important part.

Step 3. First Launch of Open Server Panel

1. Launch the program normally from the Start Menu or from the Open Server Panel desktop shortcut. Do not run it as Administrator — that is a common misconception! The official developer documentation confirms this.

2. An Open Server Panel icon will appear in the system tray (near the clock). On Windows 11, if you don't see the icon, look for the chevron (a little arrow) to the left of the language switcher — click it to show hidden icons, then right‑click the OSP icon.
A context menu with nested submenus will appear; don't be intimidated, you will quickly get used to it.
From top to bottom you will see a list of pre‑configured sites: example.local and phpmyadmin. You can hover over either one and choose "Open in browser".
As expected, neither will open yet.

3. Modules. Initialization. The Most Important Part of the Guide

Right‑click the OSP icon again and navigate as follows:

3.1. "Modules" → "PHP" → "PHP-8.5" → "Initialize" — click it.
3.2. "Modules" → "PHP" → "PHP-8.5" → "Enable" — click it. (When you check back, the cube icon should turn green.)

3.3. "Modules" → "MySQL" → "MySQL-8.4" → "Initialize" — click it.
3.4. "Modules" → "MySQL" → "MySQL-8.4" → "Enable" — click it. (Cube turns green.)

3.5. "Modules" → "HTTP" → "Apache" → "Initialize" — click it.
3.6. "Modules" → "HTTP" → "Apache" → "Enable" — click it. (Cube turns green.)

That's it. The trickiest part of configuring Open Server Panel for the first site launch is complete. However, for each individual site you will later need to assign and select these modules. This may feel overly complicated at first, but it is actually designed for maximum flexibility: one local server can host vastly different sites with different combinations of modules. This is useful not only for development and testing but also for migrating a site from an extremely outdated engine or a custom‑built system to a modern, forward‑looking web‑application framework — such as Cotonti, a wonderful system for both beginner developers and seasoned dinosaurs ;).

4. First Site – phpMyAdmin, Module Selection

We have already initialized and enabled the modules on the server, but we haven't attached them to a site yet — let's do that now!
Right‑click the OSP icon once more and go to:
4.1. "phpmyadmin" → "PHP: Do not use" → "PHP-8.5" (already highlighted in green) → select it with the radio button!
When you check again, the label will have changed from "PHP: Do not use" to "PHP-8.5" and the cube icon will be green.
Right‑click the OSP icon again and go to:
4.2. "phpmyadmin" → "HTTP: Do not use" → "Apache" — select it with the radio button.
The server will restart automatically. Afterwards, a green cube icon will appear next to "phpmyadmin" in the site list — your first site is ready to launch!

5. Launching phpMyAdmin – Hands‑On

Right‑click the OSP icon again and go to:
"phpmyadmin" → "Open in browser" — click it.
The first launch in the browser may take a moment, but I would be very surprised if phpMyAdmin doesn't start. Following the steps above guarantees a 100% success rate.

5.1. The phpMyAdmin start page will ask you to choose a "current server" from a drop‑down list. Recall Step 3 of this guide — we enabled "MySQL-8.4". Select it (any other choice will result in an error). As soon as you pick "MySQL-8.4" — which we initialized and enabled in steps 3.3 and 3.4 — you will be taken straight to the database management section of MySQL 8.4.
Similarly, you could select "MySQL-8.0" or "MySQL-5.7" if you had previously initialized and enabled them.
For future reference:
- Username: root
- Password: leave blank (literally nothing).
That sorts out the database server side for now.

Now we need to get a full‑featured website up and running.

Step 4. Running Your First Full-Featured Website (HTTP + PHP + DB) on OSPanel v.6.5.0

1. Creating a Database

Open phpMyAdmin → select the MySQL-8.4 server → click "New" to create a database.
A few simple rules for your first database:
a) Database name — only Latin letters, numbers, underscores, and hyphens! No spaces or other symbols.
b) Collation — if you don't know which encoding to choose, or unless a specific requirement dictates otherwise, always pick utf8mb4_unicode_ci from the drop‑down list.

2. Preparing the Website Folder

In my case I will be installing Cotonti CMF (a system for building specialized CMSs and ecosystems), but you can install anything — Laravel, WordPress, DLE, OpenCart, Joomla, Symfony, or any other platform. The process is similar; just follow along by analogy.
(For Cotonti, at the time of writing this guide, PHP 8.5 is still a bit too fresh, so go back to Step 3 and initialize & enable "PHP-8.4", which the engine happily works with.)

2.1. The projects folder is D:\OSPanel\home (it already contains the built‑in phpmyadmin folder).
Inside home, create a project folder named cotonti.local — for example, D:\OSPanel\home\cotonti.local. This is the project folder, not the site root itself.

2.2. Inside the project folder, create two subfolders:
.osp and public_html
2.2.1. The .osp folder and the project configuration file.
In the .osp folder, create a file called project.ini (for example, using Notepad++). However, I strongly recommend that beginners simply copy the file from D:\OSPanel_650\home\phpmyadmin\.osp\ and paste it into D:\OSPanel\home\cotonti.local\.osp\, then replace its entire contents with the following:

[cotonti.local]
http_engine = Apache
php_engine  = PHP-8.4
web_root    = {base_dir}\public_html
; Tips:
; http_engine or php_engine will be overwritten if changed via the program interface and the server is restarted.
; web_root — the path to your site inside the "home" folder, where
; {base_dir} is the domain name, i.e., the name of your project folder,
; public_html (or any other name like public, www, etc.) is the folder where your actual site files reside.

Save the file and forget about it.

2.2.2. The public_html folder — the root of your future website.
Download the latest Cotonti CMF source code from GitHub.
Unpack the archive and copy the contents of the Cotonti-master folder into public_html.

2.2.3. Right‑click the OSP icon in the system tray (as we did before). Hover over "Restart" and click it.

3. Website Installation

If you haven't skipped anything and have followed the instructions, right after the server restarts, a green planet icon will appear next to cotonti.local in the project list.
Hover over it and click "Open in browser".
Cotonti is quite a nimble engine, and the page at https://cotonti.local/install.php should open almost instantly.

3.1 The Installation Process

The Cotonti installer will start.

Step 0 of 4 — Choose your language and click "Next".

Step 1 of 4 — Server information. Click "Next".

Step 2 of 4 — Database connection. Now we need to pay close attention and recall what we did earlier.
Open phpMyAdmin, select the MySQL-8.4 server, and either use the database you created earlier or create a new one named
cotonti_local
with the collation
utf8mb4_unicode_ci or the more modern utf8mb4_0900_ai_ci.

Now return to the installer and fill in the database connection fields on the second step:

(When copying and pasting connection details, make sure you don't accidentally include any spaces.)

1. DBMS Server (a common sticking point for beginners)
Instead of the suggested
localhost
write
MySQL-8.4

2. Server port — leave empty.
3. Username — type:
root
4. Password — leave empty (nothing).
5. Database name
cotonti_local
6. Table prefix — leave as is.
Double‑check everything and click "Next".
If everything is correct, no errors will appear, and you will proceed to the next page.

Step 3 of 4 — Additional settings and Administrator details.
Don't touch the settings; just fill in the administrator credentials for your future site (all fields are mandatory) and click "Install".

Step 4 of 4 — Module and plugin selection.
You can leave the defaults for now, but it's better to deal with this later. Keep whatever is preselected in the list, scroll down, and click "Finish". The page will refresh.
The installation is now complete. At the bottom you will see "Cotonti installation successful!"
Click the "Open site" button.

The site will open with a rather ugly design, but this is exactly the case where an ugly duckling can turn into a swan. If you want a modern look, install the Index36 theme.

Summary, Takeaways, and Notes

I have personally gone through this entire process multiple times. Based on my own experience, I guarantee that if you follow this guide step by step, you will successfully run both the local server and as many sites on it as you like.

If something doesn't work — leave a comment or post in the forum section dedicated to this guide and the Open Server Panel installation process. Tell us exactly what error you encountered and at which step.