Installing Apache, PHP, and MySQL, on Windows, is certainly documented. But it’s documented in many different places. For example, the Apache installation guide is at the Apache site; the PHP installation guide is at the PHP site; etc, etc.

Not to mention, the documention is extremely technical – so it requires much re–reading.

In order to install all three of these entities, you’d have to gather all the documentation from each site, jumble it together, install it all, and still hope to leave the office at 5, with fully functioning local development capabilities.

This whole process has just become much easier.

This morning, I was directed to a very helpful site on installing PHP 5, Apache 2, MySQL 4.1, and much more, on the Windows operating system.

This is an extremely simple, clear, and concise guide to initially setting up a local development environment, on Windows.

This guide contains detailed pictures, captions, and straight–forward, non–technical instructions. It even includes areas for comments directly below each step.

Without the hassle of constantly uploading modified files, developing web applications locally can reap the same benefits of having a remote server.