If you are planning to pay someone to build your sites for you, there is no need to read any further, though I would still recommend you learn the basics, so you can keep other honest. By that I mean, if you go to a mechanic, and you need a new air filter, they may say that’ll cost you $300. If you don’t know the basics of your car, you may have to pay that. Same applies to website development. A developer may say something cost $10,000, but if you know it’s a simple change, you can take your business elsewhere. This is very important unless you really have someone you trust.
I am going to post details about the environment that I recommend. I have used some others, but ended up with this because it’s AWESOME FREE. Actually, it may not be the best, but this is definitely not an example of you get what you pay for.
PHP/MySQL/Apache
This has become the standard for many websites these days. It’s all free and there are so many developers, and code sample out there, that it’s very easy to get started. For this, I recommend the following installation. It includes the Apache Server, MySQL Database, and PHPMyAdmin all bundled up in a nice package, and in a way that’s easy to manage and upgrade. This is for PCs. There is something for the Mac called MAMP that is very similar:
EasyPHP – Windows
MAMP – Mac
Code/HTML Editor
As for Editors, you can use an Open Source environment called Eclipse. There are a bunch of different ones out there, but this is pretty good (and FREE).
Eclipse - Mac/PC (make sure you get the PHP Environment)
Database Management
If you are going to be doing alot of work with MySQL, you will need a way to manage tables, and data. EasyPHP installs PHPMyAdmin, which you can do everything you would likely need to, but if you want to do alot more, and with an easier interface, you’ll need to spend some money (not much though).
Navicat – Mac/PC
Source Control – Advanced
If you are going to be developing as part of a team, you will likely want some sort of Source Control. We use Subversion (SVN).
Subversion Source Control – Mac/PC (if you get to this point, let me know, there are alot of things you need to do it right).