Jump Start PHP Environment: Master the World’s Most Popular Language

Abstract

This book will, in great detail, explain what you need to do to prepare to start learning PHP.This might sound confusing (preparing for a start?),so let me explain. Most people, when they become interested in web development, randomly google for keywords and click the first results they find, "how to make a website," "build php mysql site tutorial," and "learn to code," the search queries will say. Inevitably, almost all newbies end up downloading XAMPP or WAMP (installer tools that get PHP and associated packages set up on your machine), setting up a basic PHP installation on their computers, and writing the legendary Hello World "app." Without fail, this is where over 70% of the newbies are lost. XAMPP, WAMP, EasyPHP, and similar bundles that get you up and running fast are―while practical at first―deterrents in the long run. We'll talk about this in more depth in later chapters, but suffice to say that while these bundles are easy to start, but hard to continue with, this book takes the exact opposite approach: more complex to start, but easy to keep going. I'll show you how to configure your development environment in such a way that you'll be able to develop without worrying about impacting anything on your computer or its operating system, and can share your code with others without concern about whether it will be compatible with their setup. What's more, you'll be able to build and test applications for various versions of PHP without needing to reinstall anything: your different versions of PHP will never conflict, and you can even test your applications on different web servers as well.