在服务器上安装PHP，这意味着什么？

Question

Here in the tutorial on PHP I read:

If your server supports PHP you don't need to do anything.

Just create some .php files in your web directory, and the server will parse them for you. Because it is free, most web hosts offer PHP support.

However, if your server does not support PHP, you must install PHP.

1. Firstly, I am not quite sure what it means to "install PHP" here. (How can a programming language be installed?)

2. Secondly, does this mean that I can go to any free host, even a host that doesn't support PHP, "install PHP" on it and it will start doing all PHP tasks for me?

Answer 1

The webservers doesn't know what to do with PHP files, therefore you have to tell it to direct those requests to the PHP interpreter, which you need to install seperately.

Your webhost needs to have this installed, it's not something you can do yourself on a shared webhost.

You can find more information here:

http://nl3.php.net/manual/en/intro-whatcando.php