phpBB development tools / environment

[bantu]

A text editor, a (svn) Repository and ... a lot of coffee.

[igorw]

A text editor

Preferably with PHP syntax highlighting. PSPad, or if you have lots of money: zend studio.

[Highway of Life]

Depending on your Operating System (Windows, Linux or Mac), you’d want to grab one of the associated LAMP stack packages:

• Some well known and popular options that run the latest (or near latest) versions of PHP, Apache and MySQL and are GPL:
• Windows - WampServer (formerly WAMP5), XAMPP, EasyPHP, JAMP, Glossword WAMP
• Linux - LAMP, XAMPP, PHPServer
• Mac - MAMP, MAMP Pro, XAMPP

If you would like, I can link you to several tutorials on getting your phpBB setup going on your localhost.

For editors, you want to get a decent PHP and HTML Editor that supports syntax highlighting.
I recommend an IDE such as:

• PhpEd
• ZDE (Zend Studio)
• Zend Studio for Eclipse
• PHP Designer
• PSPad
• TextMate
• SubEthaEdit
• And a host of dozens more

You basically want to find the editor that suits you best, but that supports Syntax Highlighting. Although most PHP IDE's also support some special PHP features such as code completion. I would stay away from WYSIWYG Editors such as Dreamweaver.
Dreamweaver is okay to use for HTML and CSS so long as you remain in Code view only.

For your database interface, your LAMP package usually comes with phpMyAdmin, although I recommend at least taking a look at Navicat.

For Javascript, an editor listed above or Aptana Studio is what I would recommend.

When coding large projects, it’s nice to use an SVN as bantu suggested, it allows you to save code and even if you make a mistake, you’re able to revert back or look at the differences. Not to mention a host of hundreds of other benefits for using an SVN.

[Dog Cow]

If you've got OS X, you don't need any of that MAMP or XAMPP rubbish-- PHP 5.2.x and Apache 2.2 come pre-installed on both the client and server versions. MySQL does NOT come, so you can download the latest version (currently 5.0.67) in standard OS X Installer format here: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5. ... macosx-dmg

Then I use TextEdit to edit all the files, though one thing TextEdit lacks is line-numbering, but I've been using it since 2006 and haven't gotten a replacement yet!

IMO, OS X is the best development system since you get the power of BSD Unix on a really sweet GUI!

[dsavi]

If you've got OS X, you don't need any of that MAMP or XAMPP rubbish-- PHP 5.2.x and Apache 2.2 come pre-installed on both the client and server versions. MySQL does NOT come, so you can download the latest version (currently 5.0.67) in standard OS X Installer format here: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5. ... macosx-dmg

Keep in mind that OS X has Sqlite installed (With PHP).
I find Eclipse PDT to be very good, it's quite big but it works great as an IDE. And then LAMP is also good.

I have a quite strange setup, Vista Home Premium with Ubuntu Studio running in a virtual machine, which acts as a server. Since I don't have the VMware network configuration set up as NAT, the virtual machine has its own local ip address, which allows me to have more than one server without digging around in my .conf files. I also use phpBB to transfer files to and from the Virtual machine, as windows networking setup is annoying. Good old http does it for me.

[Highway of Life]

If you've got OS X, you don't need any of that MAMP or XAMPP rubbish-- PHP 5.2.x and Apache 2.2 come pre-installed on both the client and server versions. MySQL does NOT come, so you can download the latest version (currently 5.0.67) in standard OS X Installer format here: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5. ... macosx-dmg

Yes, if you’re using Mac OS X 10.5, then you don’t need MAMP/XAMPP. However, having PHP/Apache pre-installed on OSX is not the reason I choose to use MAMP instead of the built-in Apache setup.

[KenH]

If you would like, I can link you to several tutorials on getting your phpBB setup going on your localhost.

I inquired regarding the tutorial and Highway of Life responded with this link:

http://wiki.phpbb.com/Localhost