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A quick overview of the PHP installation process.

If you don't have PHP installed on your computer, here are your best options:

• Download and install PHP
• Find a hosting provider that supports PHP (most hosting providers do)

You may already have a PHP hosting provider. If this is the case, all you need to do is upload your PHP files the same way you would upload any HTML file.

Downloading PHP

Even if you have a PHP hosting provider, I recommend that you install PHP on your own local environment anyway. That way, you'll become more familiar with PHP, plus, you should always have a development environment that is separate to your production environment.

You can download PHP from the PHP website here:
http://www.php.net/downloads.php

To assist with the installation, you can view the PHP documentation here:
http://www.php.net/docs.php (Just select your preferred language).

Or, you can jump straight to the English version of the installation notes here:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.php

Installing a Web Server

If your machine doesn't have a web server installed, you will need to install one before you install PHP. There are many different web servers available to choose from, so you need to choose which one you prefer. Two of the more popular web servers are:

• Apache
• Internet Information Services (IIS)

If you're using Windows, it's possible your machine already has IIS installed. You can check to see if you have a web server installed by looking under "Administration Tools" for "Internet Information Services". You can usually find IIS at either Start > Program Files > Administration Tools or Start > Control Panel > Administration Tools.

If it's not installed, you may find that you can add IIS as an optional Windows component. To do this:

• Go to Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs > Add/Remove Windows Components)
• If you see the option "Internet Information Services (IIS), select it (if it's already selected it's already installed).
• Click Next

This should install IIS for you. Once you've installed IIS, open a browser and type http://localhost. This should display the default IIS homepage. You can change this by replacing the files in the default directory (or changing the default directory location). The default directory is normally at C:\Inetpub\wwwroot. This is where you can place your .php files.