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You can use WAMP to develop and test websites locally on their own computer instead of having to get a web hosting account to develop with. Most people will be using WAMP for development purposes such as learning how to create websites with HTML, PHP, and MySQL.
Using WAMP as a Production Server

Note: I have added a tutorial that will allow you to use WAMP as a production server, but only allow your friends to have access to it. Check out the Tips and Tricks section below titled, “Using WAMP as a production server and only allowing your certain people to have access your server.”

Also note if you use WAMP as a production server, your servers speed will be limited by your internet connection speed. If you are on dialup, just one user using your server will be enough to use all your available outbound bandwidth, and your website will take a while to load. Also, even if you have DSL or cable, your outbound speed is still limited, and just a few users would be enough to bring your server down to a crawl. To find out just how fast your connection speed is, check out dslreports.com.

The best tip I have is not to use WAMP as a production server, ever. Windows and apache are a terrible combination for security. Since Windows was not really setup to run apache, there are absolutely no security settings or file permission settings you can use to help protect your server and files on your server. If you need to use Windows as your server OS, then use IIS for the server, since it was made to work with IIS, not Apache. Windows/IIS has great security, where Windows/Apache has pretty much none. If you want to use Apache as your web server, then find any Linux distro and use that, as Linux and apache are an excellent combination.
However, even when using windows/IIS, or Linux/Apache there are still many things you need know to protect your server. My number one tip is to not use your personal computer as a server. If a hacker gets in he could get access to your whole computer.

I suggest you use Linux and Apache. Since they are freeware, you don’t have to pay outrageous prices to use them compared to Windows and IIS (and fatten Bill Gates wallet in the process). If you are not an experienced Linux administrator, then you should hire a third party to administer your server for you. They can keep your server up to date, install patches and security updates, kernel upgrades, and more. Some will even install scripts for you.

I suggest you install FreeBSD or CentOS as your server OS, as they are the most secure Linux distro’s. FreeBSD is based off of BSD, and CentOS is based off of RedHat Linux. They are also all open-source (free).

If you want to host with Windows/Apache that is your own prerogative. Just beware especially if you will be storing personal data like social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc in your MySQL databases. If you fail to protect your customer’s private data, you could be liable for damages incurred by your customers from getting their personal info stolen. You could also be sued by one or all of you customers whose personal data was used for fraudulent uses. I just don’t think people understand just how easy it is for someone to hack your server if you do not know what you are doing. You need to learn how to program your scripts to keep out SQL injections, cross site scripting, session and cookie hijacking, spam-bots, etc.

About 4-5 years ago I learned my lesson about security the hard way. Some wackjob found a config file on my web server for the program phpAdsNew (config.ini.php). I was using a RedHat Linux server with apache 1.x. Stupid me, I had used the same user id and password for my database as I used when any site asks for a user id and password. Since I did not have the proper chmod file permissions for this file, he was able to access it and read the contents of the file, which contained my user id and password. He was then able to hack in to my GoDaddy account and transferred all 12 of my domain names to his account. He also logged in to many of the sponsors I used to promote to make some money on my website. He changed all the accounts to send all the money I had made to him, and then he changed the user id and passwords for the accounts so I could not access them to get my money back. He then used a website copying program and copied all the files on my web server. He then uploaded all my website files to his server, and he set the NameServer’ s for all my domain names his NameServer’s. So, now when you accessed my webpage nothing changed, but the site was no longer owned by me.

Fortunately for me, I did not have any personal data in my database. If I had, my lackadaisical attitude toward security would have cost my precious customers their personal info. I lost 12 domains, 5 websites, and my entire business. You do not know what it feels like to have 5+ years of work taken away in a manner of a few hours. I lost everything and had to start over again.

I then tried to get my domain names back, but when I tried to contact GoDaddy support they said it looked like a legitimate transaction to them. i then thought about using WIPO to get my domain names back, but it would have cost $50,000-60,000 USD in court costs and lawyer fees to get the domain names back (WIPO charges $1000-3000 USD per domain to have each domain name presented to a judge).

For god’s sake don’t use Windows/Apache to host a website. I was running Linux/apache and still got hacked.

Identity theft is multi-billion dollar business these days, and hackers a coming up with brighter and more brazen hacking tools every day. It is not an easy job to keep a server secure. and there is no way to secure you server 100% of the time. but you have to do something.