Hello world is usually the first thing a programmer learns to print to the computer screen and I thought it would be appropriate for opening this blog on PHP programming for the web.
Your going to need a few basic Items to be able to create test and run your PHP creations. Thank goodness you can get all of the Items free of charge, which makes learning less painful!
First thing you will need is a server that has PHP installed on it. Apache is the server we will be using in all of our tutorials. Much of what you learn will be useful regardless of the server you are using.
The next item your going to need is a PHP editor or a Plain text editor for creating your PHP files.
Then you need a data base and we will be using MysQL.
If you are familiar with Apache and MySQL then go to these sites and get the software and configure it which ever way suites you:
The Apache server – Get it Here
MySQL – Get it Here
A PHP editor- Get it Here
Now if you are new to Apache and MySQL and are going to use your Windows laptop or Desktop PC, then I recommend that you use a third party package to install the Server and Database. This will save you a lot of time learning and installing Apache and MySQL and allow you to get started quickly learning PHP. After all that is why you are here? 
For the Purpose of these lesson I will be using XAMPP – you can Get it Here
So once you’ve got your apache server and mySQL database installed dive into the next Lesson and get