This has probably been covered a million times before, but what I'm looking for is an idiots guide to getting PHP running on my machine so I can learn PHP and test out pages on my local machine before I go to the expense of renting space on a server.

What I would like (ideally) is to be able to use PHP4 and MySQL on my own machine. Can this be done and if so is there a good guide to setting everything up on the internet somewhere?

My computer is running Win 98 SE (Japanese version if that makes any difference) I already have PWS installed and working. From what I've seen in looking around on the net, most people use Apache with PHP. Can this be used in the same way as PWS, and will it cause any conflicts?

I have some programming experience (HTML, Javascript, some ASP and a bit of V😎

Any help gratefully received!

Graham

    Graham,

    Installing Apache is pretty simple. Grab the *.msi of the newest version (1.3.20), install the MSI Installer if you don't already have it, and run it. The installer takes the values needed to get Apache up and running, but not with PHP (you do that manually later). Versions 1.3.18+ will install and run on Win98 as a service so once the installer finishes open a DOS prompt, cd to the directory you installed Apache into, and issue the command "apache -install". The only conflict between Apache and PWS that may arise is a port sharing violation. If you need to run both, change the default port number PWS runs on to something other than 80.

    Dito for MySQL. Grab the latest binary from mysql.com and run the installer. MySQL will not run as a service on Win98, so you'll need to put a shortcut to mysqld-nt.exe in your Startup folder.

    As for installing PHP, it's pretty much a matter of extracting the zip archive and moving a few dll's to c:\windows\system and then editting php.ini and copying that to c\windows. There's a pretty comprehensive tutorial on setting up PHP for Apache (both as a module and in CGI) on Win98 on php.net.

    http://www.php.net/manual/en/install-windows.html

    HTH.

    geoff

      Opps.... sorry Graham...... the link I posted is a mix of the address to my local copy of the manual and the remote version of php.net🙁 Change the .html extension to .php (surprise, surprise🙂.

      geoff

        Geoff,

        Installing Apache per your instructions seemed simple enough until the Installation Wizard asked for server information i.e. Network Domain? Server Name? and Admin's Email address? I'm working standalone from home attempting to learn PHP. Additionally I received the warning (during installation) TCP/IP networking protocol or the Winsock2 updates were not successfully detected on this PC. BTW I'm using Win98SE.

        Any help getting past these hurdles is greatly appreciated.

        Thank you,
        Joe

          Joe,

          For the server information in the Installation Wizard, just enter the following:

          Network Domain: localhost
          Server Name: localhost
          Admin's Email: your@email.com

          That part of the wizard is designed to write the ServerAdmin and ServerName directives in httpd.conf thus allowing you to run Apache without having to manually config it first. However, since you'll need to manually config PHP support you can change the above at the same time (so it doesn't really matter what you put in).

          As to the TCP/IP warning, I've no idea why that occured. AFAIK, it's only Win95 that requires the Winsock2 update. May have been related to the missing values from the install wizard?

          HTH.

          geoff

            Write a Reply...