What do you need to start PHP?

1. Basic use and understanding of HTML/XHTML is necessary to study PHP.
    Knowledge of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) and Javascript is also helpful.
2. Web server. Your computer can be web server; we simply need to install a web server program into in. In this book we will be using Apache freom this site http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi.
3. PHP. The PHP program can be downloaded free from http://www.php.net/downloads.php
4. Database. The database program that we will be using for the using for the book is the equally popular and free software MySQL from this siote; http://www.mysql.com/downloads/
5. Text Editor. You can either such as MS Notepad is necessary to create the HTML and PHP scripts.
6. Web Browser. You can either use Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera or Google Chrome as your web browser. Yes, your computer can be a server and at the same time operate a web browser where you can output your scripts.