You need XAMPP to run a server on your PC :) And PHPMyAdmin to administer databases :) But if your friends are using a webhost those things are installed on thir server already. More on reddit.com

First a bit of history. Back when I started out learning how to setup servers, I remember XAMPP being promoted as the beginner-friendly alternative to setting up your own servers. I think I even tried it out a few times, but the nerds, at the time — those hanging out on the forums — was advising people to install servers manually, since they would learn more, so that was what I did. This was before the time of social media FYI, so the tone was very rough on these forums — if you asked a question before Googling and doing your homework, you would be crushed! Last time I tried XAMPP I actually found it to be confusing and complicated, since stuff was stored in non-standard locations. Etc. In the end I gave up and just installed Apache + MySQL + PHP the old fashioned way, and I find that works very well for me. You got to remember, in Ubuntu at least, it is just a simple matter of running: sudo apt install apache2 PHP8.0 mysql-server php8.0-fpm It is extremely easy to setup, and the location of configuration files is very intuitive once you get used to Linux. Even setting up Let's Encrypt is a matter of typing a few commands in terminal. I do not think it can get much easier than that. More on reddit.com

Apache is a regular program you can install. You don't need to register anywhere. Per default, it distributes the files located in "/var/www/html". If someone tries to access "yourwebpage.com/file.zip", Apache will respond with the file "/var/www/html/file.zip", for example. Localhost is just an alias for your own IP, as is 127.0.0.1. For example, if your IP is 192.168.1.2, it and 127.0.0.1 and localhost will bring you to the same PC - your own. XAMPP is a premade package containing some server software you might need for your website. You can set these services up yourself, but XAMPP makes it easier. PHP is a programming language run on servers, XAMPP includes it. MySQL is a database, also included in XAMPP. More on reddit.com

I’m sure someone out there is using it, but everyone I know now uses Docker. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but there’s a lot of documentation out there now too. More on reddit.com