If you want to start developing websites, you should set up a development environment on your local machine (computer) so you can work offline before making your websites live online. This also means you can work on your websites even when you’re not online, which is kind of convenient if you’re traveling or don’t have a good internet connection. It’s faster than working online (every time you make a change you have to connect to the website through the internet, as opposed to making a change on your local machine and just connecting to your machine). Also, if you already have a website up and running (a production website) you can try making changes the website on an installation of that website on your local machine before making those changes live to the universe. I’ve been learning about developing websites for the last year, and getting a development environment on my computer has been great. The last few times I’ve had to set it up I’ve gotten help from much more technical people, but this time I bit the bullet and did it all by myself. I hope these instructions can help even the most non-technical person.
These instructions are broken down into 3 main installations:
- Download and install Apache
- Download and install PHP
- Download and install MySQL Read the rest of this entry »
