First, this is for the you who is thinking of your first PHP applications and you want to run and test them on a Windows environment. You need to have a web server and a database server installed. PHP runs best on Apache and the choice of a database server narrows to mysql.

Many people know from their own experience that it’s not easy to install an Apache web server and it gets harder if you want to add MySQL, PHP and Perl. I use XAMPP which is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start.

At the moment there are four XAMPP versions:

• a version for Linux systems (tested for Ubuntu, SuSE, RedHat, Mandrake and Debian),
• a version for Windows 98, NT, 2000, 2003, XP and Vista,
• a beta version for Solaris SPARC (developed and tested under Solaris 8),
• and a beta version for MacOS X.

I have developed most of my applications on XAMPP and i highly recommend it for anyone who wants an easy way to develop and run PHP applications on a Windows environment.

Tags: Apache, MySQL, PERL, PHP, PHP in Windows, Windows, xampp