New to Open Cart, trying to set up Apache, MySQL and PHP

As the subject says, I'm kind of a noob. I have alot of HTMP and Javascript experience, but I'm trying to work with PHP and MySQL to integrate databases into my website. That's when I found opencart, I'm trying to set it up but I need Apache, MySQL and PHP installed.

Is there any order I should install these in?

When installing PHP which Web Server should I Pick?

How do I know I have the right apache and how do I install it?

Any help to get me going would be great!

Thank you!

If you are installing for development on windows XP then I would recommend xampp. It is a simple install and opencart 0.7.7 will work "out of the box". 0.7.8 requires some patches which you will find in various forum posts about SEF URLs.

A few other all-in-one solutions that I've found easy to work with are Apache2triad and EasyWamp.

Take a look at HotScripts for a good summary and some reviews of different packages.

If you're on a Mac, I highly recommend MAMP. I tried to compile and install PHP and MySQL myself, but got frustrated pretty quickly. MAMP makes it simple, and I can turn off the web server stuff when I'm not using it too, so I don't have to worry about any "always on" security risks.