PHP: Required Software

In order for you to create PHP scripts, you will require a few pieces of software:

• A web server such as Apache
• The PHP interpreter
• A database application such as MySQL

This guide, in the later chapters will be talking about databases, so in order to follow, you will want to download MySQL.

If you want the "lazy man's" PHP developer method, you can download XAMPP. XAMPP contains a full suite of tools you can install to get up and running quickly and with little to no configuration.

While you are free to use any web server or database, this guide will be using this environment for it's examples.

TIDBIT: Users who use Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP as their development environment often call this a LAMP setup.

Shared Hosting?

If you have a shared hosting environment (where you pay a company to host your web pages), you can upload the examples given in this book to their server and access them that way. This saves you the hassle of installing and configuring all the needed software yourself. Most web hosting companies offer a LAMP setup, so you shouldn't have to much trouble with meeting these requirements.