I've been trying to install PHP onto my server, but when i try open any PHP files into Internet Explorer it just opens up word with source...

Help?

Trying to install on windows?
you must open it like
http://localhost/yourfile.php
not file:/home/httpdocs/yourfile.php

Or another problem you may omit <?php and ?> tags in your code. May be you use <? and ?> tags but not enabled in php.ini.

kirtan is correct as long as you truely do have php installed correctly (and of course a webserver) if you have the webserver I'll say IIS since you're a windows user and it's the easiest to setup on windows you need to put your file in c:/inetpub/wwwroot/ and access it like kirtan said in a webrowser go to http://localhost/file.php

if you do not have php installed correctly the easiest way to do it is go to http://www.php.net/downloads.php download the windows installer... it will automatically configure IIS or Apache whichever you are running and will be good to go

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/index.html

The above link will give you PHP/MySQL/phpMyAdmin installed on your machine. Its very easy to setup, and get going. Its all point and click.

Up to me WAMP Server is best. It installs, PHP, MySQL, Apache, phpMyAdmin, SQLite and configure those in just one click. Apart from that it have excellent interface to change configs.

So teh_olley, can update us on your status?

Here's a tutorial I wrote for installing XAMPP for Windows with pictures. Which is an easy to install Apache distribution with many features you'd possibly want to have including MySQL, PHP, PERL, Filezilla FTP server, Mercury MTA (SMTP), etc.

I'll be writing more on it to correctly show people how to configure it, and even if they want, turn it into a Live Production server as well as go into setting up your files, etc

To run PHP files, they must be ran through the server because it's a server side language that depends on the server that uses PHP's interpretter to output it into HTML for viewing.

Cheers,

MC