PHP was made exclusively for the web. As such PHP scripts need to be uploaded to the server and then parsed and executed by the PHP interpreter. The process of writing code, uploading, and calling the PHP page from the browser is time consuming and frowned upon by any serious web developer.

It is critical that PHP web developers have a local development environments configured with at least Apache HTTP Server and PHP. The local development environment makes testing and debugging PHP scripts faster and easier. This eliminates the time consuming process of upload any changes to the server before they are final.

It is relatively simple to set up a reasonable development environment with little to no knowledge. Thanks to several groups of developers who have take the time to create software packages that make setting up a web server locally a snap.

Visit one of these listed sites to download your software stack today.

• XAMPP: www.apachefriends.org/en
  • Cross Platform(Windows, Mac, Linux)
  • Apache, MySQL, PHP, Pearl
• WAMP: www.wampserver.com
• Windows
•  Apache, MySQL, PHP
• EasyPHP: www.easyphp.org
• Windows
• Apache, PHP, MySQL
• MAMP: www.mamp.info
• Mac
• Apache, MySQL, PHP