[guyfromri]

Hey guys!!

I'm dipping my toes in the website development world lately and I'm finding that I really want a way to put what I'm writing in to action without having a site. It's more like I get an idea and I want to see how it looks. I'm using a bit of PHP, ASP and some random languages. I'm learning as I go.

My question is, how can I write my HTML documents and view/use them from my computer? Is there anything out there that will interpet PHP? Does windows automatically interpet ASP? Also, how I would I test my PHP/SQL code from my desktop? What program would I use to write/store SQL tables?


I know its probably a really loaded question, so go easy. I'm just trying to learn before I waste my money on hosting and web pages.

As always, thanks in advance!!

[Dormilich]

you would have to install the appropriate software on your computer:
- PHP
- a webserver (e.g. Apache)
- a database (e.g. MySQL, PostgreSQL)

for HTML/CSS/Javascript you need a browser (Firefox, Safari) and Windows doesn’t interpret ASP by default (you need at least IIS)

[Lemur]

XAMP, look it up and try it out. Pre-packaged server for windows, LAMP for Linux.

It's a quick fix but if I were you I would suggest buying an older computer and putting Linux on it and making a server from there. It WILL be difficult but you learn so much from that type of thing it is certainly worth it. I would say Fedora is a fairly good distro for setting up a basic web server.

Now if you REALLY want to go hardcore and become some type of expert then install OpenBSD and work from there. I will warn you that the difficulty of it is so substantial for a starter that you'll definitely want to avoid it starting out, but after some experience it's the next step to honing your skills.