PHP & MySQL

[MikeGreen]

Morning all,

 

I am a Network Manager for a large academy and for a local primary and recently I have had requests from our ICT department as they need to be able to teach PHP and MySQL to students. My Knowledge on PHP is limited and I was wondering if anyone else had anything set up that allows there staff to teach this securely? They have requested one piece of software called Xampp which seems like it will need an awful lot opening up for it to be used by students which we are obviously reluctant to do. Any Ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

 

Thanks

Edited October 21, 2014 by MikeGreen

[Steve21]

If you have a virtual infrastructure (or spare server etc) have you considered just setting them up a standalone server running PHP/SQL? And creating a few accounts on there for them to access what they need?

 

Found most the LAMP programs need to run services/exe/firewall permissions etc so generally are issues for limited accounts

 

Steve

[bladedanny]

I'd just setup a LAMP server using something easy like ubuntu. If you use the server install disc one of the options is LAMP.

 

Installing Xampp on would turn each computer it's installed on into a webserver. Much better IMO to have a dedicated box, if set up properly each student could have their own ftp account and find their website by going to http://servername/studentid

[jamesb]

If you've got the capacity for it a LAMP instillation doesn't need to be particularly large, so a virtual machine image with no network connection (after your initial setup) or restricted to only have limited internet access could be cooked up. You could then distribute that to your users so they each have their own sandbox to work with.

 

No risk to your network, and if they break it just redeploy the image. Best bit is that it can all be done for free (except the time spent).

[danbuntu]

We use a virtual ubuntu server with EHCP (Easy Hosting Control Panel | for Ubuntu and alikes...- Free Fast Opensource web hosting control panel for your server **) installed.

 

This makes it easy for tutors to set up a web space for students with sftp, php and mysql database. It comes with phpmyadmin for interacting with the mysql part. And it only requires port 80 to be opened up, best to put it in a dmz if possible though.

[Sam_Brown]

As long as they have access to a browser so they can access PHPMYADMIN on the webserver (this is installed by default and will let them play with MYSQL) and also share out the HTDOCS folder so they can create their own folders to copy in whatever PHP files they've created so far then they should be good to go. They shouldn't need direct access to the server itself.

 

I've set this up here with XAMMP on Server 2012 so any questions feel free to ask.

[sonofsanta]

Installing PHP and MySQL on a Windows server is about an afternoon's work. I wrote the whole thing up on here:

• Installing a PHP/MySQL Development Server for students on Windows Server 2012 - Part1 - Blogs - EduGeek.net
  
• Installing a PHP/MySQL Development Server for students on Windows Server 2012 - Part2 - Blogs - EduGeek.net
  

 

Been working a treat for us for the last year and a bit

[MikeGreen]

Thanks for all of the replies. Made things a lot clearer.