Not a Linux fan? Looking for a hassle?free way of setting up a PHP environment on your Windows box? Read as Matthew guides us through the process of installing Apache, MySQL and PHP on a Windows based machine, otherwise known as WAMP.

This article is geared towards people who want to code and test their own, or other people’s, php scripts on their Windows box. No advanced technical knowledge is assumed. This tutorial is unsuitable for advanced users. Why Apache and MySQL? Because they are available for free, quite easy to use and reliable. Why windows? Because there are many installation guides written for the Linux user, but Windows generally gets overlooked. And getting it all to work can be a real daunting task.

What is Apache?
Apache is our web server of choice; it’s free, reliable and well supported. In fact, as of October 2003 apache web servers had a market of over 67%, compared to their nearest rival Microsoft’s ISS having under 25% (http://news.netcraft.com/) So its not just a few people who think Apache is a good thing! A web server basically serves web pages from the server to the client browser. For every page you see when connecting to the internet, somewhere there is a network server sending it to you. The pages are usually sent in html format, along with images and other media.

What is MySQL?
[From MySQL.com] ‘MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database, recognized for its speed and reliability.’ A Database is a place for you to store data, whether it is user details or article text. MySQL is highly configurable and easy to use.

What is PHP?
[From PHP.net] ‘PHP is a widely?used general?purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.’ It allows web pages to be dynamically created, that is they can be easily updated and changed quickly. I’m assuming if you want to use PHP you have some idea what it is, and what it can do, if not, there are too many possibilities to be summed up in a paragraph.

Download pdf Installing PHP under Windows