PHP and MySQL are already packaged in Linux and Mac OS X OSs. However, most PHP developer are actually using Windows when developing PHP applications. This is also true to myself. I have Mandrake Linux 10 but I'll just use it for testing purposes of my finished scripts. One reason is that Windows render an amazing web presence unlike any other OS's browsers. So this page will only cover the WAMP ( Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP ). You will learn how to install Apache, PHP, and MySQL under Windows platform.

This tutorial is intended for absolute beginners and graphical-mode guys so I will use a ready-to-install package that contain those three things to start developing data-driven websites. In this case, I will use XAMMP. You can find more package here http://www.hotscripts.com. If you prefer to install them one by one, you can download it here:

Apache: http://www.apache.org
PHP: http://www.php.net
MySQL: http://www.mysql.com

A detailed info on how to install them is already outlined in their respective websites.

Now, let's go back to XAMMP. Please follow the steps below.
1. First you must download the installer here: htt://www.apachefriends.org
2. Double-click on the installer icon and choose your desired language and choose the drive where you want to install. In my case I install it in C:\Inetpub.
3. Once finished installation, go to C:\Inetpub\xammp\apache and click on the install_apache_service.bat file. This will automatically Apache as a Service so you don't have to start it manually everytime you restart your computer.
4. Go to C:\Inetpub\xammp\mysqland click on the install_mysql_service.bat file. Same with what we do to Apache, this will install MySQL as a Service.
5. Try typing in your browser this line: http://localhost/ and if you see the XAMMP logo it means that all are correctly setup and you're ready to make a dynamic websites now.

XAMMP's default document root directory is in /htdocs. In this case, it is located in C:\Inetpub\xammp\htdocs. You can put all your PHP files created here.