Question : Installing PHP XP (IIS 5.1)

Hi,

I am new to PHP. And i want to learn it by creating sample web pages on my personal machine. My machine configuration:

Windows XP Professional- 32 bit. (laptop)
IE 6.0
IIS 5.1

Problem: I tried to install PHP with help of different articles avialable on net. I tried both options, installing manually as well as msi installer.

In both the cases i am unable to run my simple PHP script. I tried to edit the PHP.ini/tried other stuff too (as suggested in net) but i am unable to make it.

My sample web site is working fine in IIS5.1 because i already done CGI programming with perl and python. They are working fine. My IIS is configured properly as i know.

How to proceed. Please help me to get the way so that i can start creating and executing my PHP script successfully. There is a lot confusion between which PHP version i should use, and which package i should download. Thread safe or non thread safe. VC6 or VC9.

Should i use msi installer or should do manual installation. Some articles says map PHPphp5isapi.dll file with .php extension but i didn't find it at all. Some says map it with php.exe.

Do i need to install extensions also. Do i need to install PECL also if yes then how? What is pear and do i need to do something with it.

I tried all way but couldn't help me.

I already tried many articles on configuring PHP on IIS but i only got confused becuase every article is saying differently.

I am using IE for running my script.

Please help me to get this resolved.

Thanks in advance.

Answer : Installing PHP XP (IIS 5.1)

Is there a reason you want to use IIS? If not, then just use WAMP server. Just a few clicks to install and you have a working environment for Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

http://www.wampserver.com/en/