Servers serve up Web pages to browsers and do many other jobs. You don't really need to understand them but you may need to know a few of the words and be able to choose a suitable server for your site. Most Web developers do not get involed in the running of the server which holds their site. They will either work for an organisation with network specialists to handle the servers or will pay a hosting organisation to host the site for them.
You can do some research if you want to know more than this:
- Web servers hold Web pages and answer requests to send the content to other systems (hosts)
- Some Web servers will also hold databases (SQL or Oracle probably)
- Some Web servers also allow the use of ASP or PHP to personalise and customise page content
- Servers tend to be Windows Server, Unix or Linux - Linux has the highest number of servers but not the bulk of transactions, yet
- Linux Web servers are often known as LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL and PHP) servers
Your own server
In order to practice PHP (and MySQL) you will need your own server. There are three main options:
- A small program called XAMPP which gives you a server by just running that program on your own computer
- Setting up a spare computer as a dedicated server (probably running Linux)
- Paying someone to let you put your site on their server (you can get it for free)
XAMPP is definitely the best option for now.More info on setting up your own server
The easiest option is to install XAMPP which is a server which will run on your PC. Don't use it for hosting a real Web site but it is ideal for practice. You can even run XAMPP from a flash drive.
Once you have a site good enough for the Web you should probably start by looking for a Web hosting company. These will give you some space and time on a shared server (don't worry it looks like your site is on its own server) and so are cheaper than running the site yourself. A Linux-based hosted server will have everything you need for what you do on this site.
