PHP Installation Tutorial 1 - Installing WAMP! - Page 1 of 5

Tutorial Aims

This tutorial is intended to be a guide through the process of installing Apache, MySQL and PHP on a Windows based machine.

Intended Audience

The intended audience is people who want to code and test their own, or other peoples, php scripts on their Windows box. No advanced technical knowledge is assumed. This tutorial is unsuitable for advanced users.

Introduction

Why Apache and MySQL? Because they are available for free, quite easy to use and reliable. Why Windows? Because there are many installation guides written for the Linux user, but Windows generally gets overlooked. And getting it all to work can be a real bitch.

What is Apache?

Apache is our web server of choice, its free, reliable and well supported, in fact as of October 2003 apache web servers had a market of over 67%, compared to their nearest rival Microsoft’s ISS having under 25% ( http://news.netcraft.com) So its not just a few people who think apache is a good thing! A web server basically serves web pages from the server to the client browser. For every page you see when connecting to the internet, somewhere there is a network server sending it to you. The pages are usually sent in html format, along with images and other media.

What is MySQL?

[From MySQL.com] ‘MySQL is the world's most popular open source database, recognized for its speed and reliability.’ A Database is a place for you to store data, whether it is user details or article text. MySQL is highly configurable and easy to use.

What is PHP?

[From php.net] ‘PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.’ It allows web pages to be dynamically created, that is they can be easily updated and changed quickly. I’m assuming if you want to use PHP you have some idea what it is, and what it can do, if not, there are too many possibilities to be summed up in a paragraph.

WAMP!

Yes, despite what many may think, Apache, MySQL and PHP (AMP) can be installed and work fine with Windows, this tutorial explains how. This tutorial is written for Windows XP, Apache 2.0.47, MySQL 4.0.15, PHP 4.3.3, However should work fine with Win2K, and other versions of AMP. I would not recommend installing AMP on Win95/98/ME.

Before we start remember to run an up-to-date virus checker on any files that you download from the internet etc. You must be logged on as a user with administrator privileges.