Ubuntu – PHP not working on fresh install

The configuration file /etc/apache2/mods-available/php5.conf controls which files Apache recognizes as php scripts (based on their extensions).

Be default (in PHP 5.3.2), the file contains the following code:

<FilesMatch "\.ph(p3?|tml)$">
    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

This affects files with the following extensions:

• .php
• .php3
• .phtml

From our discussion in chat, I know that your files have a html extension. The server was configured to treat .html files as php files, but your home computer is not. That leaves you with two options:

1. Rename your .html files that contain php code to one of the above extensions.

2. Replace the line

   <FilesMatch "\.ph(p3?|tml)$">
   

   in your php5.conf by

   <FilesMatch "\.(ph(p3?|tml)|html?)$">
   

   and reload apache by executing the following command:

   sudo service apache2 reload
   

   In addition to the previously mentioned extensions, the new configuration also affects:

   • .htm
   • .html

The code should be correct with just the <?php phpinfo(); ?> so I'm assuming the issue would be with a configuration setting.

Since it looks like you already named the file index.php, I would double check:

1. That the files are in the proper web root directory, and
2. The WAMP configuration is selecting that directory for web root.

However, if those two checks turn out clean and since you're on Windows, I would suggest that you still double check the file extension to ensure that it's a .php and not a text file by right clicking on the file and selecting properties (not by what it says in the file explorer). Depending on the program you are using, it still may default to saving as a .txt file even if you put .php at the end of your file name (Notepad can be bad about this).

Another option, if you're only doing some basic PHP development is MAMP. I've personally found it easier to use than WAMP, but that's just my experience and I'm sure there may be some that disagree with me.