MAMP

MAMP is software that allows us to run a server on our own computer with minimal configuration. This works similar to VS Code's Live Server plugin, except it provides support for technologies:

Apache server
MySQL/Maria DB databsae
PHP programming language

For this class, we will use MAMP to leverage PHP File Includes.

Setup

Download MAMP (free version, not MAMP Pro).
Click "Preferences". Under the "Server" tab, choose your Document root. This is the folder on your computer's hard drive that you want to behave like the server "root", or top-level folder. (NOTE: On Windows, folders synced with One Drive seem to have a conflict, so you may want to keep the default MAMP/htdocs folder).
Hit "OK"
Click the "Start" button in the top right corner
You should now see the MAMP homepage when visiting http://localhost:8888/MAMP/?language=English. (or possibly just http://localhost/MAMP/?language=English. on Windows)
If you change the URL to: http://localhost:8888/ you should see the contents of the document root you defined in step 2.

Try testing PHP by creating the following file as page.php and then navigating to http://localhost:8888/page.php.

<?php
        $title = 'Hello There.';
        ?>
        <!DOCTYPE html>
        <html lang="en">
        <head>
            <meta charset="UTF-8">
            <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
            <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
            <title>Document</title>
        </head>
        <body>
            <h1><?php echo $title; ?></h1>
        </body>
        </html>

To stop the server, click "Stop" in the MAMP window or quit MAMP.

From here, try incorporating PHP File Includes.