To get Drupal up and running, you will need all of the following:
A domain
A web host
FTP access to your web host
OR
A local testing environment
For building sites, either a web host or a local testing environment will meet your needs. A site built on a web-accessible domain can be shared via the internet, whereas sites built on local test machines will need to be moved to a web host before they can be used for your course. The process of backing up and moving sites is covered in Chapter 15: Backup, Maintenance, and Upgrades.
Note
In these instructions, we are assuming the use of phpMyAdmin, an open-source, browser-based tool, for administering your database. A broad range of similar tools exist, and these general instructions can be used with most of these other tools. Information on phpMyAdmin is available at http://www.phpmyadmin.net; information on other browser-based database administration tools can be found at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/gui-tools/.