Quote Originally Posted by Pannonian View Post
Javascript can format data, but it works on the clientside, so while I can grab data from a local database to test, it's obviously not ideal or even good enough in the end.
PHP seems to be one way of doing server side scripting, but it says it needs to be installed on a computer which already has a web server, which makes me wince.
But: how would you intend to run PHP scripts without a PHP interpreter? Or Perl without Perl? Or Python without... ? You get the idea. If you do not want to do anything that needs installing its own runtime + server module, your options are really limited to writing your own server (ouch), or CGI programs. And if the former made you wince, the latter should really make you scream...

The only free web server software in the wiki list of most populars is lighttpd, and like every other such software, I wouldn't know where to start.
Or Apache? You could even use IIS though that might not come with XP by default (it does with Vista or 7, and you can enable/disable it from the Control Panel).