How to install PHP step by step

The open source scripting language PHP can be installed and used on all common operating systems. If you meet all the system re­quire­ments, you can just download your desired PHP version. On Unix and Windows, it takes just three steps to install PHP.

Your system must meet specific re­quire­ments to run PHP. These may differ depending on your operating system. So before you get started in­stalling PHP, check the system re­quire­ments. Some of them will apply to all operating systems. For example, to run PHP, you need a web server. You can set up the Apache web server for this purpose. In most cases, a database such as MySQL or MariaDB will also be needed.

In­stalling PHP on UNIX systems like Linux doesn’t require much ad­di­tion­al work. Linux and the most common Linux dis­tri­bu­tions provide most of the com­pon­ents you need. Only an ANSI C compiler and module-specific com­pon­ents such as PDF libraries may need to be installed manually.

To install PHP on Windows, first ensure that your Windows version is com­pat­ible with PHP. All versions released after Windows 2008 or Windows Vista provide basic com­pat­ib­il­ity for PHP 7.2.0+.

On Windows you need the option to deal with C code. To set this up, download Visual C Runtime or C Runtime Files (CRT). You also need a suitable Visual Studio version. For most common PHP versions, Microsoft Visual C++ Re­dis­trib­ut­able for Visual Studio 2019 is a suitable choice.

Provided you own a Mac, you don’t need to do anything else to install PHP. The scripting language is included in modern macOS versions.

Unless you’re learning PHP for the first time, it’s re­com­men­ded to download the 'Current Stable' version. That’s the latest PHP version out of beta which runs error-free (as far as is known). Right now, the latest stable version is PHP 8. Although beta versions offer more features, they can be quite buggy. It’s best not to update your PHP version until the end of beta testing.

If you’re in­stalling PHP for a specific purpose, for example, for existing projects or to use the best WordPress plugins 2022. Check which PHP version is re­com­men­ded. Currently, the 'Old stable' version 7.4 is con­sidered most com­pat­ible with WordPress.

You can install PHP on Linux using the terminal. The process is quick and simple. Knowing the most important Linux terminal commands will come in handy. The following step-by-step in­struc­tions refer to the in­stall­a­tion of PHP under Linux dis­tri­bu­tion Ubuntu.

First, ensure that your system and all packages are up to date. To do this, use the following terminal commands:

The terminal will prompt you to enter your password, after which your system will be updated.

Now, PHP needs to be installed. Use the following command to do so:

Once you’ve installed PHP, you can easily check which version you’re using:

Depending on purpose, you may want to download and install a LAMP server. This way you get the PHP, Apache web server and MySQL all in one. Use the following commands:

Generally, in­stall­a­tion of PHP isn’t all that different between the various Linux dis­tri­bu­tions. But there are some small dif­fer­ences.

The in­stall­a­tion of PHP under Debian will work using the above commands. In addition to the apt-get command, there’s the aptitude command. This is a package manager that provides a menu interface, but doesn’t differ much from apt-get otherwise.

The command to install PHP using aptitude is:

The Linux dis­tri­bu­tion CentOS uses a different package manager, yum, and thus requires slightly different commands to install PHP. But the steps you use to install PHP are otherwise identical.

First, update your system and packages:

In­stalling PHP uses a similar command to Ubuntu:

You’ve got several options to install PHP on your Windows system. Besides manual con­fig­ur­a­tion with the Internet In­form­a­tion Service (IIS), you can download the Microsoft Web Platform Installer and add PHP via the graphical user interface.

Download Microsoft Web Platform Installer. Follow the steps as prompted in the in­stall­a­tion program.

Like on Linux, PHP can be used on Windows by in­stalling everything you need for the LAMP stack. You can use the XAMPP program to do this.

Since PHP is pre-installed on macOS, you don’t need step-by-step in­struc­tions. To use PHP on macOS, just remove the comment symbol in two lines of the Apache con­fig­ur­a­tion file that are sig­ni­fic­ant for the setup of PHP.

You can usually find the con­fig­ur­a­tion file via the /private/etc/apache/httpd.conf path. Once you’ve opened the file with an editor of your choice, look for the following two lines:

By removing the hashtag, you resolve the comment status of the two lines of code so that they can be read by the in­ter­pret­er. Note that the PHP version number may differ depending on which macOS version you use.