recommended Step-By-Step LAMP

A lot of the installation order stuff depends on what distribution and what sort of install you're doing. For instance, I have no idea what order you'd want to do an old-school install from source tar archive, like early '90s Slackware style. With Debian GNU/Linux, you can pretty much just tell it "apt-get install apache php4 mysql", confirm your choice, and walk away to get a cup of coffee while it installs itself (which is basically how I've installed it on a couple of systems, with only a bit of configuration tweaking when I got back to make sure it suited my purposes).

For howtos, you might try going to the O'Reilly and Associates website to check out their online-available FDL books (freely distributable books: FDL = Free Document License).

If you want a hardcopy book on your shelf that you can use as a reference, I recommend the [u]SAMS Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL, and Apache All in One[/u] (ISBN 0-672-32620-5, US$29.99), which (in the edition I own) covers PHP4.3, MySQL 4.1, and Apache 2.0. It's a beginner's book, and mostly assumes that you're comfortable with the OS you're using and little else. It even teaches basic PHP. It also comes with a CD that includes "A complete PHP, MySQL, and Apache starter kit for a Windows or Linux PC." It does address both Windows and Linux, but there isn't much space wasted on OS-related details in the book. As I said, it assumes you are already comfortable with your OS of choice, and it is thus free to mostly ignore issues relating to OSes that are not specific to the AMP web services software platform.

I, personally, have skipped over everything pertaining to Windows in the book. It's all pretty much useless to me. The rest of the book, on the other hand, has proven to be handy as a primer and to get one on one's way to administrating the thing rather than spending months trying to achieve initial implementation.

I've also found O'Reilly's [u]MySQL & mSQL[/u] book to be quite useful for some further understanding of how the lightweight SQL databases tend to work in general. (ISBN 1-56592-434-7, US$34.95)

For the extreme beginner's take on PHP itself, the [u]PHP Visual Blueprint[/u] (ISBN 0-7645-3561-7, US$26.99), published by Wiley Publishing, is very easy to understand and walks you through the basics of PHP scripting in a very structured, simple, friendly manner, though for someone already familiar with programming it's probably not worth the price tag. For a more-serious treatment of PHP as a distinct tool, check out the Peachpit Press [u]Visual Quickstart Guide: PHP for the World Wide Web[/u] as an introductory text (ISBN 0-201-72787-0, US$19.99), and [u]Visual Quickpro Guide: PHP Advanced for the World Wide Web[/u] (ISBN 0-201-77597-2, US$29.99) as a way to continue building PHP skills after the Visual Quickstart Guide. Both of the Peachpit Press books are worth their retail prices.

All of these, of course, can be had for less if you bargain-hunt sufficiently well. In fact, I got the O'Reilly [u]MySQL & mSQL[/u] for about US$8 in the bargain bin at Books-A-Million, and got both of the Peachpit Press books at a discount from Amazon.com (though these days I'm leaning heavily toward boycotting Amazon for reasons unconnected with this discussion).

How much do you know about Linux? I can recommend an awful lot of material for Linux as well, both free and otherwise. Do you know what distribution of Linux you're planning to use for this?

If you're going to be running Linux servers, and you haven't already joined a LUG mailing list, do so. The Linux user community has actually (symbolically, since there's no single entity to accept them) won awards for excellence as a tech support resource, including at least one award as best technical support provider of the year in IT. The support you can get from a LUG goes well beyond strictly Linux-related stuff as well (though how far beyond depends on the individual list: these things are community efforts, and each has its own administrators, rules, and "personalities").

Good luck, in any case.