Installing PHP under Windows

Download Appropriate Files

• Get the latest version of the Apache HTTP Server from http://httpd.apache.org/.  Make sure you get the Win32 Binary (MSI Installer) version
• Get the latest version of MySQL, with installer, from www.mysql.com
• Get the latest version of PHP from www.php.net.  Make sure you get the ZIP file with server API included

Install Apache Web Server

Run the Apache installer, and follow all on screen instructions. As you are setting this up for development and testing, the Network Domain and Server Name will both be ‘localhost’ (No quote marks). For the contact address, enter any email address you want; it’s not really important on a development/test server. Make sure Apache is installed as a service.

Test Apache Web Server

Open your web browser, and navigate to the address ’localhost’ (or http://localhost/). You should see a lovely page telling you Apache has been set up and is working correctly, but no pages have yet been added. If you’d like to at this stage, you may add any html pages you want. If you installed Apache with the default paths, go to the directory ‘C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs’; this is where any pages you want to make available are kept. Feel free to delete all the pages that start with index and add your own index.html file. index.html will be the first page you see when you go to http://localhost/, try it out, add your own! Congratulations your web server is up and running!