Forum Moderators: coopster
[edited by: StupidScript at 9:22 pm (utc) on May 18, 2005]
What you want, unless you're a big fan of installing stuff, is to use a free package called XAMPP [apachefriends.org]. Unzip it to your C:\ drive (or wherever), launch C:\xampp\apache_start.exe , and you're up and running with Apache2, PHP5, MySQL, OpenSSL, PERL, and a bunch of useful web server apps. Works great! (I'm not affiliated with XAMPP, just a fan of its installation and use on Win boxes.)
To test it's running on your local machine, go to http ://localhost/ in a browser after you start the app. To test it as an Internet-available web server, you'll need to have the IP stuff all set up and so forth ... but that's another thread. ;)
You probably won't be running any professional WinXP servers in the future, so you shouldn't spend too much time figuring out how to get all of the web stuff to work on that platform.
Concentrate on learning PHP, PERL, MySQL and so forth with an easy-to-install bundle, for now.
Later, get yourself a Linux/Unix machine and build all of the applications by hand. That's a whole 'nother challenge that will just get in the way of your learning how to program.
This is just my opinion ... but I've been doing it for twice as long as you are old, my friend! ;)
I'm with StupidScript, go with the one stop easy install and then later on when you have a better understanding of configuration and everything else that comes with it you can start playing around with that side of it.
I never installed all of that until sometime in the last year and I have been doing php for 5 yrs now, hehe. That's what systems administrators are for. ;)
Once it is set up then you can play around with some basic scripts and create a few databases, understand how to connect and manage the various languages and get them all to play nice together.
Then you can start the real fun. :)
Now I just hang out in forums, like this one! ;)
