On other hand, don’t think that test servers don’t need any protection. If you leave the server open to Internet, you’ll be exposed in the same way as production web sites, since hackers/crackers usually scans ranges of IP numbers looking for known vulnerabilities instead of targeting specific web sites.

Here I am trying to describe in a simple way how to set up an Apache server on Windows for testing purposes, with the option of include PHP and MySQL. This can be useful even if your web host runs on Linux/FreeBSD/Unix, since the functionality will be more or less the same, unless you use specific OS/server features. It can also be useful for learning and/or testing popular Apache modules like mod_rewrite that are not directly available for other servers like IIS.

Only PHP is covered since is free and widely used nowadays, where ASP is tied to IIS and Perl users probably prefer Linux. The same reasons apply to MySQL. I’m going to describe how to set up a standalone Apache server and then how to add PHP and MySQL, so people that don’t need PHP or MySQL can skip those steps.