The ABC’s of PHP II – What do I need to make it work? Page 2

Installing PHP under Windows

To install the IIS web-server under Windows, you’ll need
your original Windows install disk, you’ll also need the
professional version of your chosen Windows, if you have
home, standard or something similar then you’ll have to
download the Windows version of apache from the apache
website and install that. Go into your windows control
panel, then open ‘Add remove programs’ click on ‘Add/remove
Windows components’ on the side menu, then from the dialog
that opens select ‘IIS Internet information services’ and
click next. Follow any further instructions.

If you had to install Apache2 for windows then this will
have been just as easy, by simply answering the questions
and clicking next.

Please remember to read all dialog boxes fully, especially
any that tell you where the root of your file system is.

Once you have your web-server installed, go to www.php.net
and download the Windows binaries for PHP and click on the
downloaded file to install.

Testing the installation

If everything has gone ok, find the root folder for your web
server. Under linux this will be something such as
‘/var/srv’ or ‘/usr/share/httpd/’ or ‘c:inetpub’ depending
on your installation platform, again I can’t tell you
exactly where to look because this will be different
depending on your chosen install. One thing I will say, is
there is a chance that there may be an ‘index.html’ or
‘Default.htm’ in there somewhere which will help you decide
if it’s your web server root directory.

Once you find this location, create a simple file called
‘mytest.php’ or ‘testfile.php’ and put the following lines
in it:

<?php

  phpinfo();

?>

Save your file then try to run it using
http://localhost/mytest.php (or whatever file name you
chose) and if all goes well you should see the default php
information file.

A word of warning on choice of file name, it’s very very
ill advised to call the file phpinfo.php or phptest.php
Automated cracking tools used by script kiddie’s will very
often look for files like this to try and determine details
about a given server prior to attacking it further. A good
rule of thumb to follow is that if the file name is a common
one, and easily guessed then chances are there’s a script
out there somewhere to find it.

Summary

In this article we looked at installing a web server and PHP
so you can start creating PHP scripts, I only wish I could
have been more specific in a lot of cases, but because of
the immense number of differences it’s a very tricky thing
to do.

There are many pre made LAMP & WAMP packages that will
automate a lot of this stuff for you, and it is highly
recommended you use those. Manually installing this stuff
is not for the feint hearted and as long as I’ve been doing
this, the average Apache config file still gives even me
nightmares at times.

In the next article, we’ll get stuck into some PHP properly.

Until then

Happy PHPing

Shawty

The ABC’s of PHP Series

The ABC’s of PHP

Introduction to PHP
What do I need to make it work?
Basic Script Building in PHP
How Variable Am I?
Strings & Text
Math & Number Handling in PHP
Introduction to Arrays and Hashes in PHP
Loops and Decisions in PHP
Advanced String Processing – How Regular Are Your Expressions