If you are new PHP developer then this article will guide you to setup XAMPP on Windows.
First of all download XAMPP exe from www.apachefriends.org and start installation follow instructions.
At the end of installation installer will ask to install some servers as service. It depends on choice if you are much lazy to start servers every time, let the OS do this for you. It is always preferable not to install all the servers as service. At the finish of installation it will start servers. Test if you can able to access http server by opening these URLs http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1
For securing your XAMPP installation type this URL in browser http://127.0.0.1/security now you will be able to change default passwords of MySQL, PhpMyAdmin and FileZilla. After securing your development area you can start using it.
Now for publishing web contents find default www document (htdocs) folder in xampp installation directory. Create new html document test.html and put some content and try accessing it in browser using http://localhost/test.html same procedure follow for creating PHP file. You can create subfolders (new) in your document root (htdocs) and copy test.html file there. Then enter the URL http://localhost/new/test.html to view this in your browser.
For sending request to default page ex. index.html, index.php you will have to configure httpd.conf file before changing this file make sure you have created backup file. Now search for “DirectoryIndex” directive in the file. You can find httpd.conf file in apache/conf folder for your xmapp install folder.
DirectoryIndex index.php index.php4 index.php3 index.cgi index.pl index.html index.htm index.shtml index.phtml
Now save httpd.conf file and restart apache server. Create index file with any extension you have included in DirectoryIndex directive and save it. Type http://localhost in the browser and enter you will see default page you created just now. Enjoy!!!