Quote Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios View Post
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...
I was naively thinking that the php interpreter could be a relatively lightweight application, self-contained in the php installer, that could read a webpage request, send the appropriate instructions to a given database, process the data, and return the filtered data.

Which web server software are free to trial, or better still, free to run with limited features? I don't need anything fancy as yet, just something that will install, and allow the php interpreter to run off it. Or if I have the wrong end of the stick entirely, can you explain how I can go about it with minimal fuss? Like I said, I have sweet FA experience of anything web-related higher up the food chain.