On to the good stuff!
Adding functionality to your website. Moving beyond static web designs to dynamic web design.

PHP 5 / MySQL
Programming

Chapter One: Exploring the PHP environment.
This chater will best be handled by installing a single software package that will take care of installing PHP, Apache and MySQL. Best of all, the software is FREE!

WAMP software.

Alternative approach, NOT recommended for commercial use!

Web server on a stick.

download.

Instructions:

Simply unzip it directly to your pen drive. But beware, since this is the full Xampp version it take up over 280 meg (the zip file is about 80 meg).

When you get it unzipped to your pendrive it must be in the root of the drive (e.g. E:\xampp) navigate to the directory and double click on xampp-control.exe. A program box appears that will allow you to start the Apache webserver and the MySQL server.

In the status window, if the Status Check does not say OK (it might say
Busy) then Exit out of the control program, there is a .bat file you must run first. Find setup_xampp.bat and double click it and follow the instructions. Then re-run xampp-control.exe.

To start Apache and MySQL you don't have to select the check boxes, just click on Start next to each service to get them going.

That is it. You should be able to navigate to http://localhost and see the XAMPP service screen. You can also test the MySQL connection by navigating to http://localhost/wordpress and see if the WordPress blog comes up.

To stop the services close the browser windows, run the xampp-control.exe program and Stop the Apache and MySQL services and then Exit the control program. If you don't stop the services and Exit the control program first you can't eject your pendrive cleanly (Windows will say it can't stop the pendrive).