Unzip the php zip - file to C:\php (To unzip the files you will need Powerarchiver or Winzip or a similar tool).
Use Windows Explorer to get into the folder C:\php
Rename php.ini-dist to php.ini and open the file in a text editor (e. g. Notepad).
Create the folder C:\web where we shall store the HTML/PHP files.
You must do two changes in the file: doc_root shall be changed to doc_root = "c:\web" and extension_dir shall be changed to extension_dir = "c:\php\extensions"
Save the file.
Usually not necessary: If you get problems with the Apache/PHP-integration you can try to move (or copy) both php.ini and php4ts.dll to your windows path (e. g. C:\winnt or C:\windows).
Some times you also have to change the Windows include path in php.ini from ;include_path = ".;c:\php\includes" to include_path = "." (remove ; and at least use a dot (.) as include_path.)
The default setting for register_globals is off. It is a security risk to set it to on, but at the moment you must do it to get all the functions in MGW to work: register_globals = On
You must also do some configuration changes in the Apache configuration file to get PHP to work. Open C:\web\Apache\conf\httpd.conf in your text editor (e. g. Notepad) and do the following changes:
DocumentRoot "C:/web"
<Directory "C:/web">
Use / (forward slash) and NOT \ (backslash)!!!!
Find the line AddType application/x-tar .tgz and add the following lines below:
ScriptAlias /php4/ "c:/php/"
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php3
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php4
Action application/x-httpd-php "/php4/php.exe"
To avoid file listing in stead of running index.php files you can add index.php to the DirectoryIndex parameter:
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
Save your file. You now have to restart the Apache web server to activate the changes.
After restarting the Apache server you can make a test file to check that the PHP extensions work. Start your text editor, write
<?php phpinfo(); ?>
and save the file in C:\web as test.php
Start your webbrowser with the web page http://localhost/test.php or http://yourPCname/test.php. You should get a lot of information about PHP.
Above we have set PHP Server API to CGI. To get better speed etc. it can be a smart move to change from CGI to Apache. To do that you must open httpd.conf and replace the lines below:
ScriptAlias /php4/ "c:/php/" AddType application/x-httpd-php .php AddType application/x-httpd-php .php3 AddType application/x-httpd-php .php4 Action application/x-httpd-php "/php4/php.exe"
with:
LoadModule php4_module c:/php/sapi/php4apache.dll AddModule mod_php4.c AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
You must MOVE php4ts.dll from C:\php to C:\windows\system32 (or C:\winnt\system32). php.ini should be moved to C:\windows (or C:\winnt). Stop and start Apache to activate the changes.