what should I use for a testing server
 

I am editing & writing some php with dreamweaver.
I need to download a testing server onto my harddrive.
What should I use? I'm on windows xp.
ps--a free or trial one if there is one.


thanks

... and you call yourself a webmaster?

for asking for recomendations on which testing server to use?

I just thought it'd be faster than ftp, check, then rewrite & fto again & check & repeat.

with a testing server. I just hit f12 see the work & continue working??

I need to have the php & mysql work on my harddrive

Microsoft IIS / PWS or Apache?

never tried that one but:

http://apache2triad.net/

www.sourceforge.org should find some good systems here. stick with the standards, you're going to hurt yourself if you go witha non-standard and find out it's not compadible. Also get it on a new box (hopefully you can find a 2k box PIII or higher, if not I have one you can borrow if you are in phoenix) and network it, set your testing server in dreamweaver to the IP of that box and wham! it'll be your best friend. Don't forget to get a proxie server somewhere so you can test it "off the network".

good luck

http://www.instantservers.com/ it will require a php & sql plugins which are free

thanks for your replies everyone, I found what I needed to get the php to work locally. thanks

Just remember the one I used ( similar to the one above ...):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phptriad

what did you use? tell us if you like it Pros/Cons

I actually didnt install anything, just changed dreamweaver to edit directly on the remote server instead of local :)

good call, i don't like the testing server on the same machine i'm editing on, you can imagine how many issues you can run into.