Chapter 2. Installing PHP

Even if you intend to use a remote web server for your site, where PHP is already installed, it is still beneficial to be able to install PHP on your own machine so that you can test your pages more easily.

Installing PHP yourself opens up many possibilities: you get to choose exactly which extensions are available, which options are enabled, and the filesystem layout that you want. Of course, if you intend to upload your scripts to a different server at the end of the process, you should be careful to mimic the remote configuration on your local machine.

This chapter goes through a full install of PHP on Windows and Unix, installing extensions, and also configuring settings in the php.ini configuration file.