Getting Started with NetBeans IDE

Coming from ASP.NET to PHP, a good IDE is very important to me. After doing some research, I decided to start out with NetBeans as the IDE for my PHP development. NetBeans is a free IDE. You can download it from netbeans.org.  Just click the "Download Free" button on the home page and make sure you select the version for PHP development on the next page.  Once you have installed NetBeans on you system, you will have to configure PHP to use NetBeans as the debugger so that you can step through and debug your PHP web applications using NetBeans. 

Here are the steps to setup NetBeans as your debugger:

1. Open the php.ini file in a text editor. This file is located in C:\xampp\php\ directory.
2. Search for the line that contains "php_xdebug.dll"
3. Remove the semicolon from the beginning of this line. Once you're done, it should look like this: zend_extension = "C:\xampp\php\ext\php_xdebug.dll"
4. Next, search for the line that contains "xdebug.remote_enable = 0"
5. Remove the semicolon from the beginning of this line and change the 0 to 1. When you're done it should look like this: xdebug.remote_enable = 1
6. Save your changes.
7. Start and stop apache.

You have now successfully configured NetBeans as your php debugger.