Using PHP and MySQL to develop website

Question

I want to develop a professional website using PHP and MySQL. Can i do it in Windows 7 (64-bit) or i need to install linux based OS. How to go for it.

Answer 1

You can run an AMP Stack (Apache, mySQL, PHP) on Windows no problem. I have been doing this for ten years now. Running on Windows 7 64-bit is also no problem.

There are several pre-packaged installers available. My favourite is XAMPP . They usually allow full customization where needed.

You can also download the stand-alone binaries of each product and install them manually. Makes for very, very good learning but is more work.

Answer 2

Yes, you can.
Though a platform is the least thing you will need...

Answer 3

As mentioned it is possible to develop Php and MySQL sites quite happily on Windows using something like XAMPP, even if they are later to be deployed on a Linux web server and I know a lot of people do this and it works great for them.

However I have found in the past you can run into problems later on this way. For example, a lot of people who have only used Windows in the past can get caught out by case-sensitivity in Linux. So your site runs great locally but then you start getting lots of 404 errors when you go live because for example, mypage.php is not the same as myPage.php any more.

At the other end of the development spectrum, you can achieve some really powerful functionality when you start to work the server a bit more - things like video encoding or audio conversion are possible using PHP (with a bit of help from some other apps) on both Windows and Linux but the ways that you would do it are different therefore your development environment becomes much less useful and again you run the risk of putting something live that doesn't work, even tho it runs fine when you test it locally.

Personally, I think it is always best to develop on as close an environment to the intended production server as you can to avoid any nasty surprises when you go live.

Answer 4

Develop on the same platform you are going to be deploying to (if possible). It'll make it extremely easy to deploy with less room for possible error.

Answer 5

在Windows 7上安装64位版本的Apache / PHP / MySQL有点麻烦，但是您可以使用apachefriends.org上的XAMPP（如Pekka所述）轻松地安装32位版本。

Answer 6

For Windows you can use a light package, which content php, apache, mysql, pear. link text