nadamt — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 09:30:29 +0000

Yeah, if Go Daddy's worth the money that you're dropping for it the it should already have PHP installed natively (considering it is free and all). That said, you're going to want to download PHP and Apache (at least) to your computer as well. I mean, unless you want to upload your files to Go Daddy every time you want to test them.

You can download Apache for local use here. The installation for 2.2.3 on Windows is actually quite easy. Just remember that both your "Network Domain" and "Server Name" are both "localhost" and that the e-mail that you give does not have to be real. You can test to see if you installed it correctly by typing in "http://localhost/" in your address bar in your preffered internet browser. It'll let you know if it works.

For installing PHP: I'm reading an excellent PHP book called "PHP Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy" which makes refrence to a supplemental site that has simplified instructions for installing PHP 5.2.0 for Windows. Test it by sending a file to C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\conf\ (if you're using Windows) called phpinfo.php (note the file extention). The file should contain the following:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>'

Type in "http://localhost/phpinfo.php" in your browser of choice. You'll easily be able to see if it works. (You may have to restart Apache before running that test successfully.)