A walk through, from the beginning, PLEASE!!

stp

So, I've been messing around w/ trying to install easyPHP and various other methods but just can't seem to figure it out (the easyPHP help file is in French...no help there). Can someone please walk me through on how to set it up and configure it? Honestly, I am very new to this and the geek terms that I've come across in so-called "help files" on various php, apache, etc., websites just doesn't seem to be helping much...layman's terms would be helpful.

halojoy

download and install
XAMPP
it is in english
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

it has an auto installer that will have it all running quickly
There are both Windows and Linux versions.

Often you can do with the XAMPP-Lite package.
There is plenty in full XAMPP that is not really needed for a PHP site

NogDog

WAMP is another option for an all-in-one installer on Windows. I've used both WAMP and XAMPP and both worked well for me. I slightly prefer WAMP's user interface for making on the fly configuration changes, while XAMPP gets the nod if you're also interested in having Perl in addition to PHP.