Accessibility
David Powers

David Powers

fpo

Charles Nadeau

Adobe

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Set up PHP for Windows
  3. Set up PHP for Mac OS X
  4. Install MySQL and PHP separately
  5. Define a PHP site in Dreamweaver
  6. Create a MySQL database and user account
  7. Connect to the database
Created:
16 July 2007
Modified:
23 February 2009
User Level:
Beginner
Products:
Dreamweaver

Setting up a PHP development environment for Dreamweaver

Note: This article was originally written by Charles Nadeau for Dreamweaver CS3 and updated by David Powers for Dreamweaver CS4.

This tutorial describes how to set up a PHP development environment on a Windows or a Macintosh computer for building PHP web applications with Adobe Dreamweaver and a MySQL database server.

Setting up a PHP development environment for Dreamweaver requires a web server (such as Apache or IIS), PHP, and a MySQL database. Although you can install all three separately, it's usually much simpler to use an all-in-one solution, such as XAMPP for Windows or MAMP for Mac OS X.

This setup tutorial shows you how to complete the following tasks:

  • Install and run a web server as well as a PHP application server on your local computer
  • Install the MySQL database server on your local computer
  • Define a PHP site
  • Import data into MySQL and create a MySQL user account for your web application
  • Connect to a sample database

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

Dreamweaver CS4

XAMPP (if you have Windows)

MAMP (if you have Mac OS X)

Note: Adobe does not provide technical support for third-party products such as XAMPP and MAMP referenced in this article.

Sample files:

Page 1 of 7
Next Page

About the authors

David Powers is the author of several best-selling books about Dreamweaver and PHP, including The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP, PHP Solutions, and PHP Object-Oriented Solutions (all published by friends of ED). He's an Adobe Community Expert for Dreamweaver and specializes in developing web solutions using PHP and the MySQL database. Prior to his career as an author, David was a BBC radio and TV journalist, and spent many years working in Japan. He has translated several musical plays from Japanese into English.

Charles Nadeau is a documentation manager at Adobe, where he leads the development of end-user content for Dreamweaver and acts as the Web Suite content architect. He also managed the documentation for Flex Builder 1 and 2, Fireworks 8, and the last few releases of Dreamweaver. Charles started at the company by writing the help for Dreamweaver UltraDev 1 and 4 as well as numerous articles and tutorials. Charles’ interests include web design and development, motorcycling, and history.