To install PHP on your system, you can follow any one of these approaches
- You can either get PHP along with the packages like WAMP Server, XAMPP etc.
- You can install PHP directly from internet if you already have a testing server installed.
First let us understand what these packages are
WAMP, XAMPP, LAMP & MAMP are the packages available to be used on different operating systems. WAMP is suitable for a windows operating system, LAMP is for Linux, XAMPP is supported in both windows and Linux Operating systems and MAMP is used for MAC Operating system.
The ‘A’ in all these packages stands for Apache, which is a server software that is responsible to process the web pages on your testing system.
‘M’ stands for MySQL which is a database Management System. A Database Management System is a software to create and manage databases. If you are building a dynamic website or a dynamic web application, then a database is an essential part that your application should have.
‘P’ obviously stands for PHP.
You can choose the package as per your operating system. However all of these packages differ in terms of your system configuration also. For Example there would be two separate versions of WAMP available for a 32 bit and a 64 bit operating system. So you need to keep these things in your mind before choosing a package.
One of the purposes of these packages is to turn your own PC into a virtual server. This is required because it allows to test your web page or website before you upload it to a live server. (Keep in mind that PHP only executes on a server, so turning your system to a server, however a virtual one is mandatory.)
If you wanna host your website or web page over the internet, you need to purchase a hosting space on a particular server. This would cost you a particular sum of money. This is why for learning purpose, we use these packages which allows a developer to test the website or a web page on a local machine.
Manual installation of PHP –
- First we need to download the latest version of PHP.
- Then extract the downloaded zip file and move the contents in a separate folder created in C drive.
- After that, search for a file named php.ini.development. Make a copy of it and rename it as php.ini.
- Open this file in notepad or some other text editor. Find ‘extension_dir’ and remove the semicolon.
- There are some other important extensions as well which can be enabled or disabled as per your needs.
Download links –
You can download these packages from these links.