web server advice

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One of my work collegues wants to setup an in house webserver for testing. He wants to use it for testing website html and php code we're working on.

What he wants to know is what do we need to set this up? Apart from the obvious liek a PC!
Whats teh bestter OS for this Linux or Windows, does it need to be server based? Would it be an idea to install and run Apache or is that too much?

This is only for basic PHP coding and we design, nothing too fancy, just to test before we put it live.

 

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Either Linux or Windows i would say and run Lamp (Linux) or Wamp (Windows) for the apache and php side of things. Should be up and running in 5 minutes rather than messing about with configs in the full apache for the next week

That's how i would do it anyway if it is just a test server to mess about on.

 

You don't need a server for HTML files but you do for PHP, it being a server side language.
Linux distros normally come with Apache but if you're already using windows stick to that.
Try looking for AMP packages (Apache, Mysql, PHP) that will self-install all three components.

 

Wamp is the easiest way of doing it, but if you're going to be using a proper server then you best get used to to setting up databases and whatnot and IIS.

 

I only really use LAMP based servers for websites and webapps, however, i often carry out development on a windows box.

I tend to use XAMPP from Apache Friends as it takes only a minute to install and set-up a Apache,PHP, MYSQL test bed on a windows machine.

I then edit my hosts file to set-up a host/domain name to point to my localhost, just for local usage and testing without messing up DNS or live sites etc.

It takes a little more effort to add virtual domains for multiple website/projects and also into install PEAR addons but it is documented if you google for it.

However, i am probably going to find a small micro distro of linux to run as a VM something like Arch Linux, possibly even with XAMPP for Linux

 

What platform will the code be deployed on? I always try to test my code on the platform on which it will ultimately be running. If that's not an issue, I'd use whatever platform you're most comfortable with. As the others have mentioned, there's plenty of resources for using either Linux or Windows.

 

At the moment i've plumped to use WAMP as it seemed straight forward enough for testing. If i can get to use this at work then my collegue can at home as well. As we're both going to be doing things in PHP now, it makes some sort of sense to use the same thing.

 

Install CentOS and install LxAdmin Host-in-a-box or whatever it's called. It should install everything you need (e.g. apache, sql, php etc) and give you a nice panel to manage it.

Alternatively, I think 'Webmin' does the same thing.

You don't have to install a panel but it makes life so much easier as it automates most of the tasks.