Before learning PHP you need setup an environment which is required to run an PHP program.
Following are the things need to be installed in your system to run an PHP program.

1. PHP
2. Web server
3. Database

This tutorial is made for beginners so, to make learning process easy we will consider Windows XP as
Operating System for this tutorial.

1.PHP

PHP binary source has to be installed in your system which contains necessary CGI files to run  your PHP
Program. You can download this from official PHP website php.net .

2.Web Server

Web server is the which process request and responses. There are many web servers available,
But I prefer using Apache web server or you can use windows IIS.

3.Database

Database is used for storing inter-related data. PHP supports many Databases but MySQL is the
popular one used with PHP.

XAMPP

Setting up the environment is tough for an beginner because you have to install PHP, Apache, Mysql,
Make configurations and changes in php.ini , apache server settings, mysql settings, etc. To make this
job easy XAMPP is an package which contains PHP, Apache, MySQL and do necessary configurations
at the time of installation.

You can download XAMPP from http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Note: XAMPP is available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac.


Now the environment is ready for making PHP programs. You can learn PHP program in my next article.