Gibbon installation on Windows 11 with AMPPS - 404 errors after login (Resolved)

I am a Windows user because the schools we operate are primarily in a Microsoft-based environment, although my background is originally Linux.

I successfully installed Gibbon on a Windows 11 machine using AMPPS (Apache, MySQL/MariaDB and PHP). The installation completed without errors, and I was able to log in successfully.

However, after logging in, every page navigation resulted in a 404 error.

Environment:

  • OS: Windows 11

  • Web Server: AMPPS Apache

  • Database: MySQL/MariaDB

  • Installation path:

C:\Program Files\Ampps\www\gibbon

The Gibbon directory was copied into the AMPPS web root.

The Apache logs showed requests such as:

GET /index.php?q=/modules/Attendance/attendance.php → 404
GET /index.php?q=/modules/Finance/invoices_manage.php → 404
GET /index.php?q=/modules/Calendar/calendar_view.php → 404

After a bit of soul searching and research/troubleshooting, I discovered the generated URLs where incorrectly.

The generated links were:

http://localhost/index.php?q=...

but they should have been:

http://localhost/gibbon/index.php?q=...

The issue was caused by the absoluteURL setting in:

System Admin → System Settings

The URL had been entered incorrectly as:

http://localhost\gibbon

The backslash (\) was being treated as a Windows path separator instead of a web URL separator.

Changing it to:

http://localhost/gibbon

resolved the issue immediately.

After the change, all modules loaded correctly.

Hopefully this helps anyone testing Gibbon on Windows/AMPPS who encounters a similar 404 issue.

Newton