IIS before PHP

I was told in this topic : http://www.ozzu.com/ftopic26428.html that I needed to install IIS before PHP onto my XP running PC.

Im not famier with what IIS is and how it works, and am looking for some help or guidance from someone.

Any help and advice is appreaciated. Thank you.

By "IIS", you can go full out and install the whole thing, or you can install the Personal Web Server that comes with windows.

It's not known for its brilliance, even if it does support ASP, so you're better off getting something like Apache that supports PHP

so how does that work? what do i need to do?

Go to http://miniserver.sf.net/ and download unifrom server, it includes Apache and PHP and MySQL. Thats your best option if you want to develop PHP and stuff on your home PC.

Yeah, I'd go with Apache...

Personally, I use Foxserv - http://www.foxserv.net

It's another Apache/PHP/MySQL combo all in a single setup file.

All you do is download, run the setup, then you're good to go. No messing around trying to figure out all the configuration options and getting everything really happy when all you need to do is simply start editing PHP and seeing it in action.

Quite safe to use? Even for a novice (before I go ahead and install)

Foxserve that is. I have the install file.

Oh yeah, FoxServ is about as newbie-friendly as it gets

Runs sweet on Win2K Pro and WinXP Pro.

Well its installed. Does this mean I can now view php pages on my own pc rather than through a server?

With uniform server you don't need to install - just download, unzip and run. It doesn't even put anything in your registry.

With uniform server you double click oln Start.bat and then go to http://localhost/ . You put your pages in W:\www.

I assume it would be similar with foxserv.