I remember the first time I installed PHP and tried configuring it to run on Microsoft™ Internet Information Server (IIS), it was somewhat interesting and difficult then, but why go through that trouble now after all IIS is not the preferred web server for PHP applications anyway.
Let’s get our software by going to apachefriends.org to download xampp, a software bundle comprising of
- Apache web server
- PHP
- MySQL
- FileZilla
- Mercury
- PEAR ( PHP Extension and Application Repository)
- Perl
- etc
It comes in various formats, there is a windows executable and formats for some linux distributions. I presume a lot of people will be working on the windows platform, so lets walk through the installation on a windows platform.
The installation process is really simple, just double click on the setup file to start the installation. Read the instructions and proceed to the next stage, the only real important decision you will have to make is whether to run Apache and MySQL as services on Fig. 3. As services/daemon, you would not have to start them manually anytime you want to test your PHP scripts so accept those options by checking the checkboxes besides them.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Pointing your browser’s URL to http://localhost loads the page, Fig. 4, shown below. Just select your language of preference from the list of available languages.
Fig. 4
