XAMPP for Windows
Shorty
Manchester, UK Icrontian
Being honest, the ability to host apache WWW server with PHP & MySQL support is great for both development and learning 
However, that traditionally requires using a *NIX setup. You can always download the appropriate Windows binaries but the configuration can fox the newbie (even though there are about a million different tutorials on setting them up to work together on teh mighty Google).
Enter XAMPP..
So let's get this right...
Apache = WWW
MySQL - database
Scripting languages/CGI-BIN = PHP, perl
Includes mail sending support, FTP server and PHPMyAdmin??!
ApacheFriends.org have nailed all this together into a really smart setup. It's a nice way of starting out on the PHP/MySQL/Apache ladder without installing Linux or trying to configure the individual binaries
It's not a replacement for learning but if you just want to see if it's for you, this would be a pretty painless way to find out
If thats more than you need. They even do a "lite" version
However, that traditionally requires using a *NIX setup. You can always download the appropriate Windows binaries but the configuration can fox the newbie (even though there are about a million different tutorials on setting them up to work together on teh mighty Google).
Enter XAMPP..
Apache 2.0.47, MySQL 4.0.14, PHP 4.3.3 rc2 + PEAR, Perl 5.8.0, mod_php 4.3.2, mod_perl 1.99_10, mod_ssl 2.0.47, openssl 0.9.7b, PHPMyAdmin 2.5.2 rc1, Webalizer 2.01-10, Mercury Mail Transport System for Win32 and NetWare Systems v3.32, JpGraph 1.12.1, FileZilla FTP Server 0.8.5, (WEB-DAV + MOD AUTH MYSQL experimental).
So let's get this right...
Apache = WWW
MySQL - database
Scripting languages/CGI-BIN = PHP, perl
Includes mail sending support, FTP server and PHPMyAdmin??!
ApacheFriends.org have nailed all this together into a really smart setup. It's a nice way of starting out on the PHP/MySQL/Apache ladder without installing Linux or trying to configure the individual binaries
It's not a replacement for learning but if you just want to see if it's for you, this would be a pretty painless way to find out
If thats more than you need. They even do a "lite" version
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