How to manually add a mysql version to WampServer?

Why do I need this?

WampServer is a great web development environment but it's a bit outdated so if you want to work with latest mysql you need to do it manually.

Prerequirements

You need to have WampServer 2.5 or later (may work for older versions too), if you don't know how to install WampServer check my tutorial here.

Where to download?

You can download the latest mysql server from the official site. Based on your machine you will download the 32-bit or 64-bit, if you don't know which is for you download the 32-bit. Download the MSI installer and not the zip archive. If the latest version is 5.6.20 as your read this then you can download it directly from the below links (official links).

• MySQL Server 5.6.20 (x86, 32-bit)
• MySQL Server 5.6.20 (x64, 64-bit)

How to install it?

Go to C:\wamp\bin\mysql directory, there you will see the old mysql server in my example is mysql5.6.17. Now create a folder mysqlx.x.x based on the version you downloaded without deleting the old one, in my example is mysql5.6.20. If you installed the 32-bit version go to C:\Program Files (x86)\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6 otherwise go to C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.6 and copy all the files to the mysql5.6.20 folder. Finally go to the mysql5.6.17 and copy the wampserver.conf to the mysql5.6.20 folder. Exit from WampServer and open it again, now click to the WampServer tray icon, MySQL, Version and now you will see that there are 2 mysql versions the 5.6.17 and the 5.6.20. Click on the one that you want to use, both works.

Notes

After that you can uninstall the MySQL Server.

Verify that it works

Go to the localhost and you will see MySQL Version : 5.6.20