There have been some problems with XAMPP and Windows 7, especially for 64-bit versions of Win7. The current version of XAMPP is known to have some problems in the 64-bit version of Win7.
wampServer64 is a variation of XAMPP optimized for 64-bit Windows installations. It is very similar to XAMPP in usage, but the control system is a bit different. Please check the documentation on the home page for details. Also note that the WampServer64 is not the first download on the page, so you'll need to scroll down to get to it.
I've run into a number of conflicts with Skype. If your server is not working, make sure you do not have skype running in the background. For some reason, Skype is preset to use port 80, which conflicts with the default web server port. Turning off Skype while you're running your server seems to resolve this issue.
As of the book publication (August '08) freehostia does not fully support PHP6. All of the code is running using PHP 5.1. Almost all PHP6 code runs fine on this version of PHP, except the filter functions (filter_input, filter_has_var, and filter_input_array.) Since the use of these functions is central to the book, I used a slightly sneaky workaround for the online files.
All the source files on this server are presented exactly as they are in the book, but the running code has a slight modification. Every file that uses one of the filter functions begins with an include statement bringing up a file called filterFake.php. This library contains 'fake' versions of the filter functions. If you've included filterFake.php in your program, you can still use the filter functions, and they'll populate the variables as you expect.
The code for filterFake.php is available here.
Be aware that these fake filter functions do not have any of the filtering behavior that the versions in PHP6 have. Instead, they are simply wrappers to the $_REQUEST technique that's typically used in PHP5. The resulting programs are not as secure as proper PHP6 programs, but they're no worse than the majority of PHP5 programs being used today.
Feel free to use filterFake.php in your own projects if you want to run code using a PHP6 style on a server that's running PHP5. As soon as PHP6 becomes more standard, drop the filterFake include, and your programs will call the filter functions built into php6
All code in this book has been thoroughly tested, and runs on this server. Still, errors do get through in a book of this magnitude. All known errors are available on the following page. None involve code, but there are a few changes in the text which can help if you are confused. These errors have been submitted to the publisher, and should be corrected in the next printing. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused. Please comment in the forums or write if you spot an error I have not caught.