Posted by strawberry on 04/22/06 02:49

Probably not - if, as you say, your hosting package does it all. For
myself, I like to develop and host some pages locally. This means
setting up my PC as though it were a web server, and that's where xampp
comes in.

I'd give you a more technical explanation of the respective roles of
the apache server, mysql engine, and php scripting if I could but all I
really know is that if I chuck it all on my machine and give it a good
stir it all seems to work.

I think all you need for your purposes is the ability to create and
interrogate databases (so mysql, as provided by your service provider),
and the ability to display (and interactively modify) the results (PHP,
again as provided). And you also need to be able to construct the PHP
pages themselves. You could probably splash out on something like
ColdFusion but I doubt it's necessary. I just use a good text editor -
better than notepad (and not Word) - and massive recourse to a well
known search engine.

Phpmyadmin provides a friendly way to view, manage and manipulate
databases - including some assistance in the construction of queries,
and (most importantly) the ability to test your queries. Programmes
like Navicat also provide friendly interfaces for the direct
manipulation of the raw data. Navicat's very clever, but I don't
actually find much use for it. So, IMO textpad (or similar), coupled
with your ISP's phpmyadmin-integrated set-up, and regular trawling of
newsgroups and tutorials should suffice. Oh, and a couple of books
doesn't hurt!

Most importantly, don't lose sight of why you went down this road in
the first place - to make life easier for everyone. These are great
tools but if the solution starts looking more arduous than the problem
itself... well, you have been warned!!!

Good luck!

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