Prepare the environment for PHP programming

This post aims to developer, who is familiar with programming but has less experiences with PHP. Here you can see what need to do to start working with PHP.

Operation system
PHP can be mostly installed in Windows (all version), Linux (all version), MacOS. As my observer, Linux gives the best performance and suitable for both junior and advance PHP programmer.

IDE
There're many IDE for PHP programming, most of them do the good job. I prefer PDT to others, because it's eclipse's plugin and support syntax highlight, indentation, good completion.

Aside from that, PDT is acceptable for HTML/CSS/Javascript editing.

What to do
Here comes the list of what need to do

• download and install Webserver, Apache  is good for all of us, but you may want to try Ngnix
• download and install PHP. It's vary from OS.
• download and install database system, MySQL  is good for start. Next time you may want to try some NoSQL
• config your webserver to support mod rewrite and install the necessarily library for connecting PHP to database server.

The last time
Create some project, find sample code, and start working. You'll learn a lot while dealing with real problem.