There are all sorts of languages out there. So I'm not going to go into which server-side language is best for you, which one you should use, or even how to pick the best one in this article. I will tell you that they all require a server to run. So regardless of your experience and expertise at any or all of the server-side languages, you cannot preview that site you're working on until it is living in a server environment.

There are two server environments to choose from: local and remote. A local server is, as you might have guessed, hosted locally on your own computer while a remote server is hosted elsewhere. It might be a paid hosting plan, another computer on a local area network, or even a free hosting plan; regardless, a remote server is a server that is not on your computer.

So, which type is best for testing? That's really up to you. I prefer the local server route, and that's what I am going to focus on today. But I often encourage my clients to also set up remote testing servers, which I will also cover today.