Thanks to a bunch of most excellent Germans, I now have Apache, PHP5 and MySQL running on my old WinME machine. XAMP allows you to run a complete duplicate of your web server right at home. For fiddling with code and learning stuff it is quite something.
I have tried a number of times to get this kind of thing running but always failed spectacularly. XAMPP comes with it’s own installer which never even makes an entry in the registry. To get rid of it I only need to delete the directory!
Why have I done this? It is so I can play with modifications to scripts without running the risk of crashing the web server and every site on it. I haven’t done that but others have, much to their regret and others annoyance.
More importantly, I am able to work on files whilst having them open in my browser. No need to go through all the uploading, changing file permissions, renaming and .htaccess bollocks that is normal. It is excellent for developing and learning and I can’t recommend it highly enough.