PHP Things you need

For this tutorial and any PHP programming you will do later you will need only a few FREE things.

Firstly a text/PHP editor. You can use notepad in windows or the equivalent in *nix . For windows I suggest PHP Editor Personal edition (available from mpsoftware.com) If you use the Personal edition it’s completely free with no drawbacks that will affect us here, the only downside is you cant use your PHP to make money if you use the Personal edition (EG you cant sell your work legally unless you pay MPSOFTWARE)

Also you will need a server installation. This might sound complicated but believe me it’s not! On many *nix systems you will already have a directory in your root file system which is like "var/www" or "var/public_html" or similar. This will be your server's root address, meaning that anything you put in there will be viewable when you type the address "HTTP://127.0.0.1" into your browser. To test if you have a good version of apache installed you can run some sample code such as

<?
echo "it works";
?>

If you see ONLY the words "it works" then it appears you have a good version of apache and won’t need a web server installation. If you want to update the software or install it if it’s not working google XAMPP and download the *nix version and install, (I'm not a *nix guru so I can’t guide you through this process though it shouldn’t be difficult)

On windows platforms you will need to download another tool. It's called apache and it is software which allows your home computer to become just like a web server so you can see your own website on your own computer without the hassle of uploading anything. The software I recommend is XAMPP, it is a version of apache for windows that has a control panel and such to help you use it properly (google is your friend). Download the Windows version as an EXE file (this is the easiest and is the installation method I used myself) and then run the file. You will get a few options such as language and where to install. Obviously as I’m British I chose English but of course choose the language you know best. As for where to install the default works fine for me but you can change it if you need to. Just follow the steps and you'll be ready to go.

I use windows and I use the PHP designer software from MPSOFTWARE and XAMPP and I find they are the two best tools I've used for writing all types of code so that is what I recommend using, the tutorial wont focus on these specific tools though so you can use any standard text/php/html editor and any installation of apache (providing it is up to date).