About the Author

Kevin Yank

Kevin began developing for the

Web in 1995 and is a highly

respected technical author. He

wrote Build your own

Database Driven Website using

PHP and MySQL, a practical step-by-step

guide published by SitePoint, and he's

co-author of the SitePoint Tech Times, a

bi-weekly newsletter for technically-minded

web developers. Kev believes that any good

webmaster should have seen at least one

episode of MacGyver.

View all articles by Kevin Yank...

By: Kevin Yank

June 14th, 2010

Reader Rating: Not yet rated

If you’re lucky, your current web host’s web server already has PHP and MySQL installed. Most do—that’s

one of the reasons why PHP and MySQL are so popular. If your web host is so equipped, the good news is

that you’ll be able to publish your first database driven web site without having to shop for a web host that

supports the right technologies.

The bad news is that you’re still going to need to install PHP and MySQL yourself. That’s because you

need your own PHP-and-MySQL-equipped web server to test your database driven web site on before you

publish it for all the world to see.

When developing static web sites, you can often load your HTML files directly from your hard disk into

your browser to see how they look. There’s no web server software involved when you do this, which is

fine, because web browsers can understand HTML code all by themselves.

When it comes to dynamic web sites built using PHP and MySQL, however, your web browser needs some

help! Web browsers are unable to understand PHP scripts; rather, PHP scripts contain instructions for a

PHP-savvy web server to execute in order to generate the HTML code that browsers can understand. So in addition to the web server that will host your

site publicly, you also need your own private web server to use in the development of your site.

If you work for a company that has an especially helpful IT department, you may find that there’s already a development web server provided for you. The

typical setup is that you must work on your site’s files on a network drive that’s hosted by an internal web server that can be safely used for development.

When you’re ready to deploy the site to the public, your files are copied from that network drive to the public web server.

If you’re lucky enough to work in this kind of environment, you can skip most of today’s lesson. However, you’ll want to ask the IT boffins responsible for

the development server for a MySQL username and password. You’ll need to have that critical information handy when you start using the PHP and

MySQL support they’ve so helpfully provided.

Your Own Web Server

Sitepoint : New Articles, Fresh Thinking for Web Developers and Desi... http://articles.sitepoint.com/print/your-own-web-server

1 sur 1 9/12/2010 22:27