Here’s the first part of my “Setting Up” tutorials. It will teach you how to set up to learn PHP, and for web development. It is my own personally journey as well because I’m getting ready to make new WordPress themes. I’m using Windows XP, soon will be upgrading to Windows 7 (when it comes out) so most of my tutorials will be Windows-oriented.

Installing the Server Software

The best way to learn PHP and scripting is at home and without buying a domain nor paying for hosting. So let’s set up your computer as a server using XAMPP. XAMPP stands for X (as in a variable instead of an OS name) Apache, MySQL, PHP, and PERL. You can use any other alternative depending on your operating system. There’s also WAMP for Windows (I use this one) and MAMP for Mac. All are basically the same with small differences. I’ll show you how to use XAMPP because it’s the most cross-platform package. I’ll do an article on how to set up your Linux with XAMPP later.

More >