The Pinged Hobbit

The number of people capable of building a web site is growing daily (I said capable, I didn’t say good . Something else that is also growing along side this is the number of web based applications being built. More and more developers/people with some know how are devoting time to producing some kind of application that uses a web based language like ASP or PHP. The hard part about building something that uses a server side script like PHP is that it is impossible to test your application with out access to a web server. I suppose you could just upload it to an active web site and test it live on the internet so to speak. Would you be honestly comfortable releasing something that hadn’t been tested? It would be all too easy for some one to find an exploit to use that causes serious problems. I’d say it’s much easier to have some way of testing this on your local network, that way if you have no internet access for some reason at least you can keep working

Obviously the answer is to run your own web server on a local PC. With that in mind I’ve pulled together a list of some of the offerings out there that enable you to do this:

1. IIS in Windows Server: On a windows server you can enable IIS and this gives you a server you can test your files on to some extent, especially if you install asp.net at the same time. ISS doesn’t have PHP installed by default but it is possible to add it once your server is up an running and if you want a database engine you will need to install SQL. As a rule though, IIS tends to require one of the Windows Server operating system, although it is possible to install it on XP.Unlike the other applications on this list there is the associated cost of having a Windows server.
2. Install Apache: IIS is great if you have Windows, but what about if you are using Linux/OS X? Or how about you just don’t like Microsoft products? Apache is an open source web server that runs on all three major opperating systems. It’s also much most widely used to run web sites, in fact current Netcraft figures show it as having a market share of 47% (June 2009). Just as with IIS you will still need to install PHP and SQL.
3. XAMPP: If you want an easy way to install a web server on your PC that runs PHP and SQL then XAMPP is one of the easiest ways to do this. It’s a zero configuration Apache server with PHP and My SQL installed by default. It even comes with phpMyAdmin for controlling your SQL databases.
4. Server2Go:Server2Go is another zero configuration web server that runs PHP and My SQL (depending on which version you download). The difference between XAMPP and Server2Go is that Server2Go is designed to run on write protected media i.e. CD-Roms. There Windows service, it’s all controlled by an executable which can be started up when needed and then shut down when you are finished with the server. If you prefer you can also install it on to a USB datastick.

At the end of the day, if you are serious about being a web developer then you should at least attempt to setup your own server from scratch, installing SQL and PHP by yourself. However sometimes if you are in a hurry, or if your wanting something a little more portable then the option of Server2Go or XAMPP might well be the way forward for you.