Now we have our web server set up and you can upload your files and things securely, we need to make sure all your PHP files are being complied properly.  You'll probably be using MySQL too, so let's do that at the same time.

Start up PuTTY and connect. Installing PHP is shockingly simple. Type apt-get install php5, you'll have to be logged in as root. PHP4 is about to have its last security updates, so there's no point in getting that now. After that, I don't actually remember having to do anything other than restart Apache (/etc/init.d/apache2/ restart).

There's an article on AboutDebian about some web server stuff. That gives a few more steps in installing PHP, but I don't remember having to do those. That could be because they're using Sarge (I'm using Etch) and PHP4 (we're installing PHP5).

Now to install MySQL. This is simple too, just use apt-get again, but this time you're looking for mysql-server. If you have to, tell it to start at boot up, so that it runs automatically without you having to start it manually.

Then you'll need to install the php5-mysql package to make them work together. Then we need to let PHP know to load that module, to do that we need to edit the php.ini file. You can do that by typing (if you have the same set up):

nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

Then, do a search for:

;extension mysql.so

And simply uncomment that line. Save it, and then restart Apache and everything should be up and running. Go and make a phpinfo() file and it should list MySQL as a module.