Installation on Windows systems

Windows InstallShield

The Windows PHP installer is available from the downloads page at /downloads.php. This installs the CGI version of PHP and, for IIS, PWS, and Xitami, configures the web server as well.

Install your selected HTTP server on your system and make sure that it works.

Run the executable installer and follow the instructions provided by the installation wizard. Two types of installation are supported - standard, which provides sensible defaults for all the settings it can, and advanced, which asks questions as it goes along.

The installation wizard gathers enough information to set up the php.ini file and configure the web server to use PHP. For IIS and also PWS on NT Workstation, a list of all the nodes on the server with script map settings is displayed, and you can choose those nodes to which you wish to add the PHP script mappings.

Once the installation has completed the installer will inform you if you need to restart your system, restart the server, or just start using PHP.

Manual Installation Steps

This install guide will help you manually install and configure PHP on your Windows webserver. The original version of this guide was compiled by Bob Silva, and can be found at http://www.umesd.k12.or.us/php/win32install.html. You need to download the zip binary distribution from the downloads page at /downloads.php.

PHP 4 for Windows comes in three flavours - a CGI executable (php.exe), a CLI executable (sapi/php.exe) and some other SAPI modules:

The following steps should be performed on all installations before any server specific instructions.

• Extract the distribution file to a directory of your choice, c:\ is a good start. The zip package expands to a foldername like php-4.3.1-Win32 which is assumed to be renamed to php. For the sake of convenience and to be version independent the following steps assume your extracted version of PHP lives in c:\php. You might choose any other location but you probably do not want to use a path in which spaces are included (for example: C:\Program Files\PHP is not a good idea). Some web servers will crash if you do. The structure of your directory you extracted the zip file will look like:

c:\php
   |
   +--cli
   |  |
   |  |-php.exe           -- CLI executable - ONLY for commandline scripting
   |
   |
   +--dlls                -- support dlls for extensions --> Windows system directory
   |  |
   |  |-expat.dll
   |  |
   |  |-fdftk.dll
   |  |
   |  |-...
   |
   +--extensions          -- extension dlls for PHP
   |  |
   |  |-php_bz2.dll
   |  |
   |  |-php_cpdf.dll
   |  |
   |  |-..
   |
   +--mibs                -- support files for SNMP
   |
   |
   +--openssl             -- support files for Openssl
   |
   |
   +--pdf-related         -- support files for PDF
   |
   |
   +--sapi                -- SAPI dlls
   |  |
   |  |-php4apache.dll
   |  |
   |  |-php4apache2.dll
   |  |
   |  |-php4isapi.dll
   |  |
   |  |-..
   |
   |-install.txt
   |
   |-..
   |
   |-php.exe              -- CGI executable
   |
   |-..
   |
   |-php.ini-dist
   |
   |-php.ini-recommended
   | 
   |-php4ts.dll           -- main dll --> Windows system directory
   | 
   |-...

The CGI binary - c:\php\php.exe -, the CLI binary - c:\php\cli\php.exe -, and the SAPI modules - c:\php\sapi\*.dll - rely on the main dll c:\php\php4ts.dll. You have to make sure, that this dll can be found by your PHP installation. The search order for this dll is as follows:

• The best bet is to make php4ts.dll available, regardless which interface (CGI or SAPI module) you plan to use. To do so, you have to copy this dll to a directory on your Windows path. The best place is your Windows system directory:

  C:\Windows\System for Windows 9x/ME

  C:\WINNT\System32 for Windows NT/2000 or C:\WINNT40\System32 for NT/2000 server

  C:\Windows\System32 for Windows XP

  If you plan to use a SAPI module from c:\php\sapi and do not like to copy dlls to your Windows system directory, you have the alternative choice to simply copy php4ts.dll to the sapi folder of your extracted zip package, c:\php\sapi.

• The next step is to set up a valid configuration file for PHP, php.ini. There are two ini files distributed in the zip file, php.ini-dist and php.ini-recommended. We advise you to use php.ini-recommended, because we optimized the default settings in this file for performance, and security. Read this well documented file carefully and in addition study the ini settings and set every element manually yourself. If you would like to achieve the best security, then this is the way for you, although PHP works fine with these default ini files. Copy your chosen ini-file to a directory where PHP is able to find and rename it to php.ini. By default PHP searches php.ini in your Windows directory:

  On Windows 9x/ME/XP copy your chosen ini file to your %WINDIR%, which is typically C:\Windows.

  On Windows NT/2000 copy your chosen ini file to your %WINDIR% or %SYSTEMROOT%, which is typically C:\WINNT or C:\WINNT40 for NT/2000 servers.

• If you're using NTFS on Windows NT, 2000 or XP, make sure that the user running the webserver has read permissions to your php.ini (e.g. make it readable by Everyone).

The following steps are optional.

• Edit your new php.ini file. If you plan to use OmniHTTPd, do not follow the next step. Set the doc_root to point to your webservers document_root. For example:

  doc_root = c:\inetpub // for IIS/PWS doc_root = c:\apache\htdocs // for Apache

• Choose which extensions you would like to load when PHP starts. See the section about Windows extensions, about how to set up one, and what is already built in. Note that on a new installation it is advisable to first get PHP working and tested without any extensions before enabling them in php.ini.

• On PWS and IIS, you can set the browscap configuration setting to point to: c:\windows\system\inetsrv\browscap.ini on Windows 9x/Me, c:\winnt\system32\inetsrv\browscap.ini on NT/2000, and c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\browscap.ini on XP.

Following this instructions you are done with the basic steps to setup PHP on Windows. The next step is to choose a webserver and enable it to run PHP. Installation instructions for the following webservers are available:

• .. the Windows server family, Personal Web server (PWS) 3 and 4 or newer; Internet Information Server (IIS) 3 and 4 or newer.

• .. the Apache servers Apache 1.3.x, and Apache 2.x.

• .. the Netscape/iPlanet servers.

• .. the OmniHTTPd server.

• .. the Oreilly Website Pro server.

• .. the Sambar server.

• .. the Xitami server.

Building from source

Before getting started, it is worthwhile answering the question: "Why is building on Windows so hard?" Two reasons come to mind:

1. Windows does not (yet) enjoy a large community of developers who are willing to freely share their source. As a direct result, the necessary investment in infrastructure required to support such development hasn't been made. By and large, what is available has been made possible by the porting of necessary utilities from Unix. Don't be surprised if some of this heritage shows through from time to time.

2. Pretty much all of the instructions that follow are of the "set and forget" variety. So sit back and try follow the instructions below as faithfully as you can.

+--c:\work
|  |
|  +--bindlib_w32
|  |  |
|  |  +--arpa
|  |  |
|  |  +--conf
|  |  |
|  |  +--...
|  |
|  +--php-4.x.x
|  |  |
|  |  +--build
|  |  |
|  |  +--...
|  |  |
|  |  +--win32
|  |  |
|  |  +--...
|  |
|  +--win32build
|  |  |
|  |  +--bin
|  |  |
|  |  +--include
|  |  |
|  |  +--lib

Installation of Windows extensions

After installing PHP and a webserver on Windows, you will probably want to install some extensions for added functionality. You can choose which extensions you would like to load when PHP starts by modifying your php.ini. You can also load a module dynamically in your script using dl().

The DLLs for PHP extensions are prefixed with 'php_' in PHP 4 (and 'php3_' in PHP 3). This prevents confusion between PHP extensions and their supporting libraries.

The default location PHP searches for extensions is c:\php4\extensions. To change this setting to reflect your setup of PHP edit your php.ini file:

• You will need to change the extension_dir setting to point to the directory where your extensions lives, or where you have placed your php_*.dll files. Please do not forget the last backslash. For example:

  extension_dir = c:/php/extensions/

• Enable the extension(s) in php.ini you want to use by uncommenting the extension=php_*.dll lines in php.ini. This is done by deleting the leading ; form the extension you want to load.

  Primer 3-3. Enable Bzip2 extension for PHP-Windows // change the following line from ... ;extension=php_bz2.dll // ... to extension=php_bz2.dll

• Some of the extensions need extra DLLs to work. Couple of them can be found in the distribution package, in the c:\php\dlls\ folder but some, for example Oracle (php_oci8.dll) require DLLs which are not bundled with the distribution package. Copy the bundled DLLs from c:\php\dlls folder to your Windows PATH, safe places are:

  c:\windows\system for Windows 9x/Me

  c:\winnt\system32 for Windows NT/2000

  c:\windows\system32 for Windows XP

  If you have them already installed on your system, overwrite them only if something doesn't work correctly (Before overwriting them, it is a good idea to make a backup of them, or move them to another folder - just in case something goes wrong).

The following table describes some of the extensions available and required additional dlls.