Tools Of The Trade

[Fenty]

This thread will basically cover what you need to have something to begin working with. Firstly you need to install a webserver onto your own computer.

What you need (all free):
Apache
Mysql
PHP
PHPMyAdmin
Zend

How to?
Well simply because im lazy im not going to go through each and every step on how to install these. But thanks to the internet being such a wide place with alot of resources im just going to point you in the direction of a tutorial:

http://www.webmasterstop.com/48.html

Alternatively if your lazy and want an all in one (AIO) installer head over to apache friends and download "XAMPP" and install that and you can be running a simple home testing server within minutes.

Link:
http://www.apachefriends.org/


Now, with them installed you need some things to help you begin coding.

Software you could use:

AnyEdit
Dreamweaver
EditPlus
HTML-Kit
jEdit
Notepad
PhpED
PHPEdit
SourceEdit
TextPad
UltraEdit-32
Wordpad
Zend Development Environment

I myself tend to use the ones found in bold + italics

Zend is probably the best for PHP out of the ones I personally use as it has highlighted syntax, Block mode editing, Line Numbers, Word-wrapping, PHP Code Auto-Completion (if you want) and search and replace (good for when alot of things have to be changed)

Zend can be found here: http://www.zend.com/

Download a trial version and see what you think!