Hello,

Firstly, Merry Christmas to everyone! :cheesy:

I'm thinking of installing PHP on WinXP Pro, using IIS 5.1 as my web server. I have browsed around and there's 2 versions of PHP( i.e. PHP4 and PHP5). I have no prior knowledge or experience in PHP whatsoever. I only did some VBScript using IIS, some java and c programming. Neither of them needed much configuration at all.

My queries are:

1. Which would be a better version of PHP to install? (i.e. which version is more stable and has better functionality support.)

2. Is manual installation really that much better than using the installer?

I would be running PHP locally on my laptop to practise and learn the language from scratch. :o

Thank you very much in advance for your assistance and guidance!


Sincerely,
Rackus

Use php5 since it is the latest version. and on the php website they should tell you how to install it for your website.

ERMMMM, just go and download MySQL at mysql.com Be sure to gget the latest also. If yo ujust want to run php and dont care wheather its php4 or php5 then search in google or sourcforge for PHPTrial or XAMPP.

IT would be best to do everythinb by hand.

Are you going to be using IIS or apache?

If this is for testing on your local i suggest running apache esp if your regular webserver is linux based as IIS will be insanely differnt.


you can get and run apache + php + mysql really easily.

If your going to be using IIS run it as an ISAPI filter, as it is a much better choice overall, Not a fan of IIS so I can'te tell you how to get php setup, just dont set it up as CGI.

your going to want install php by hand, as most people have a hard time configuring php5 to work with mysql esp on windows, use php 4 and mysql 4.0.20/22/23

Another great post.

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much for the swift replies despite it being the holidays!

Just to confirm that I understood things right...

Its most ideal to run PHP on Apache. My OS is Win XP Pro with Service Pack 2 installed. Thus the recommended softwares are as follows:
1. apache_2.0.52-win32-x86-no_ssl
2. mysql-4.1.8-win-noinstall
3. php-5.0.3-Win32 but would most prob switch to PHP4 to reduce complications during setup as suggested Zachery.

The names are the names of the files that I downloaded. Have not started the installation process until I'm pretty sure what (configuration issues) I'm getting myself into.

As I already have IIS installed, I just don't run IIS when running Apache to avoid any conflict issues, right?

Anyone else has any additional suggestions or recommendations??

Once again thank you so much everyone for your swift responses!!


Sincerely,
Rackus

Hi everyone...

When you guys say install PHP by hand... are you guys referring to downloading the binary files and use C/C++ compiler to compile it? - OR - using the MSI installer to install and edit the configuration?

Actually what is the difference between binary files, source files and build files for Apache?

Thank you for your prompt and helpful replies!


Sincerely,
Rackus

http://ibsoftware.d2digitalmedia.com/ibserver/

lets you install MySql,Apache and PHP In an installer

Hi Adam,

Thanks for the link!

Wanna ask you if I would still need to do additional configuration after using that "program" to install? As in all it does is the installation and bare basic setup, after which I need to edit the configuration files to add some lines here n there??

Thank you once again.


Sincerely,
Rackus

well it installs the basic as well as changes in Apache that index.php and index.htm are default too. Think that is about it....