Hi.
Firstly, I am a complete novice. If you can help me you will make a despairing woman very relieved and eternally grateful.
My website and its database perform perfectly when hosted online by my web host, so I know everything works. I have currently removed my site from their servers and need to do some work on it offline, on my own PC (running Windows Vista Home Premium) before uploading it again. I should mention that it is NOT a Wordpress site.
I have installed XAMPP 1.8.0, put all my site files in its htdocs folder, created a the database and installed my .sql file and the database works fine; I can access it via phpMyAdmin. Apache and MySql start without problem.
However, I need to know how to get my site's php files to display properly as web pages, just as they do when the site is uploaded and online. I really don't know what I am doing and think I am overlooking something basic.
If I go to localhost/index.php, to open my site;s home page, all that shows in the browser is the actual code typed on the index.php file. The same goes for all the php pages. The page does not get assembled into its web page, it just displays all the code. I also tried using c:/xampp/htdocs/index.php but that gives the same result.
I created a test php file, with just an html line and a php line but only the html line displays. There is nothing displayed where the php line should be (not even the php code this time).
What am I overlooking? Probably something very basic but I am an absolute novice, so haven't a clue. I know very little about php or MySQL and even less about xampp.
When my site was created some years ago, I could access it all offline using xampp but I can't remember how and the person who helped me then is now unavailable to remind me.
Can anyone tell me, in the simplest terms, what I should be doing to make my site's php pages display properly, please?
Regards
Cocori