I want to test my PHP code before putting it up on the server. It's a shared hosting account so I don't want to adversely affect the other webs on it.

I have Vista on my laptop and I just want to try some code locally before I upload.

I could set up a dedicated L.A.M.P. machine, but I wanted to stay portable.

Any suggestions?

First, avoid the bundles like WAMP and XAMP. You'll want to learn to configure PHP and any associated server software by hand if possible. Or at least, download the MSI installers.

In addition to PHP, you'll want Apache if you're testing web pages, and MySQL if you're doing anything at all dynamic that needs to store data. Also, you'll want to try and download versions that match the shared host as closely as possible... though that may be difficult if your host is still on PHP 4.x as that's not available in a complied form anymore. My recommended install sequence...

1) http://httpd.apache.org/

2) http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.0...

3) http://www.php.net/downloads.php

Depending on what type of development you're doing, you might also want to look at ActiveState Komodo Edit... it's free, and one of the best editors for PHP (and Python, and SQL, and XML, and on and on) that I've seen out there...

http://www.activestate.com/Products/komo...