There are lots of free web server packages available. I recommend WAMP (http://www.wampserver.com/en/) for Windows and MAMP (http://www.mamp.info/) for Mac users. Both of these packages provide Apache, MySQL, and PHP—the AMP part of the acronyms WAMP and MAMP. The W stands for Windows and M for Mac. If you're on Linux, then there should be a LAMP package available for your distribution. One option is XAMPP (the final P stands for Perl), which you should be able to install through your distribution's package manager. XAMPP is also available for other platforms. This book assumes you are using Windows, so the following instructions are for the WAMP package:
Download the appropriate server package for your operating system.
Run the installer. In most cases accepting the default settings is fine.
Set your default browser. The installer defaults to Internet Explorer.
Click the WAMPServer icon in the system tray and navigate to Apache | Apache Modules...