Apache Friends Support Forum

I'm BRAND spanking new to the webserver field, and just wanting to learn and get a basic grasp on things, I've asked tons of people for guides so I can understand what needs to be done, and they all just give links of things to download... well that's no help. So finally a friend I trusted said to get xampp as a nice introduction to this field, so I've downloaded, installed and now... have no clue where to even begin. So I asked more people for guides/how to's, and none of them provided any links, so now I come to the source, in desperate need of some form of guide on getting started, doesn't need to be much, but something that will at least get me going in the right direction... I don't have time to mess around with the sink or swim philosophy which seems to be the general thought process for this field.

I've tried searching this site, and this forum, but it seems to all be the advanced day-to-day situations... so is anyone familiar with any form of a guide? I'd so greatly appreciate it as I'd love to learn all about this, but right now I'm just at a lost where to being...

Thanks for any information anyone might be able to provide

XAMPP exists so you don't have to learn things you won't have to do when you host your production site. So don't bother much with apache/mysql configuration/settings.... as whoever is hosting your website will handle that.

Get a book on PHP and MySQL. I like PHP and MySQL web development. You have several books worth of information to learn.

Pick an IDE with a good php debugger.
I use Zend Studio. Don't install Zend Platform, install Zend Debugger (add a .dll and edit php.ini)

If you don't know what something means, try wikipedia.
If you don't know how a program works read the manual.

Be wary of books/tutorials/guides that deal with different version numbers that what you are working with.

Use Evernotes (free version) to take detailed notes, otherwise a year from know you won't remember what setting changed fixed that problem with X...