PHP I : Installation & Configuration

Installation and Configuration Issues

Windows vs. Unix

Development vs. Production Environments

 

Installing It All on Windows: The Hard Way

Elizabeth Fulgum’s Tutorial: Installing and Configuring

Especially note: Configuring the PHP.INI

 

Installing It All: The “Easy” Way

The WikiPedia Comparison of WAMPs at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WAMPs

XAMPP at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

WAMP5 at
http://www.en.wampserver.com/

phpdev Download and Installation Bundles from Firepages: http://www.firepages.com.au/

Apache2Triad: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=93507

 

Why You Must Understand php.ini

php.ini is the supreme deity of the PHP world. There are at least three critical things you should consider setting:

  1. display_errors = on
    Setting this to “on” lets you see important debugging errors while you’re learning PHP.
  2. error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE
    Perversely, you’ll want NOTICEs off to avoid excessive error messages; take it for granted that while you’re learning you’ll be violating some coding standards.
  3. register_globals = On
    This is a cheat. You can use it as training wheels early on, but it’s much better for you to learn to use superglobals. As early as possible, turn this back off.

You may also want to see if the short_open_tag setting is 1 (on).

See the University of Washington’s “Using a php.ini file” at
http://www.washington.edu/computing/web/publishing/php-ini.html

…as well as the PHPFreaks.com “PHP.INI Setup!!” article at
http://www.phpfreaks.com/tutorials/72/0.php

 

To Do for This Section:

Get XAMPP from the Instructor’s Files.

Install it into C:\XAMPP.

Check the settings in your PHP.INI file(s).