JavaScript Workshop » Tools for a Local PHP/MySQL Environment

In order to setup a proper development environment for your home PC to create and test PHP and MySQL web pages you will need at least three components:

Web server: PHP will work with virtually all web server software, including Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS), but is most often used with the freely available Apache server.

Database: PHP will work with virtually all database software, including ORACLE and Sybase, but is most often used with free MySQL database software for which it has specific optimizations.

PHP parser: In order to process PHP script instructions, a parser must be installed to generate HTML output that can be sent to the web browser.  The parser engine is identical, irrespective of the operating system, so PHP pages need no changes to run on different platforms.

Editors: You can use a free web editor to make writing and editing PHP scripts easier such as PHP Designer 2007 - Personal or Komodo Edit which have features such as code highlighting, autocomplete and debugging.

Each of these components can be installed seperately, but would require configuration changes for them to work properly.

An easier solution would be to install a software package that does everything for you. The most popular are XAMPP, WAMP5, and Uniform Server.  These distributions make it easy to get started developing in PHP and MySQL without all the extra hassle.