Hey,
I am starting to develop my site and i was think of installing PHP and Mysql on my home computer for faster devlopment and cheaper because then i wouldnt have to pay for hosting charges.

What do you guy think?
And do you know any good installers like xampp?

Hi,
Well depending on the OS of the machine I'd say it's a good idea for starters (if you know your way around apache/mysql/php). You'll probably have to think about extra security. If you start getting more traffic I would suggest moving to a hosting company.
Good luck.

Wampserver on windows
xampp on linux

Just dont host the site directly from you computer, especially if you have basic DSL because you will eat up your monthly bandwidth if you get any traffic fairly quickly, and a lot of companies like bellsouth and such will terminate your service if you get DDoS'ed, as well as risks of exploiting the apache and mysql servers...

It's always better to do testing on a development platform, and release your change when you know it works. What you suggest is the BEST option for developping, also because it might be even faster directly on your home computer (you wont have to deal with network latencies).

One thing you have to take care is the implication of having a different configuration. Will it mater for what you do? (it wont if it's basic PHP+MySQL for example). If you need to deal with the operating system, maybe a cheap VPS is best too (it doesn't need to be fast, but only to have enough memory for your app...). Otherwise, I think your solution is best.

As said by SaniX11, hosting from home is another story, it would be fool to think it's a good idea because:
- electricity will go higher (from 20 to 30 USD let's say)
- sometimes you wont be there and there could be fire in your home because of the computer running all the time
- dsl/cable connections are slow for uploading with most of the time latencies
- your server wont be monitored with somebody to watch over network
- your ISP wont have an uptime as good as a host for your home server
- etc...

For all those reasons, at least a cheap VPS is a much better idea for hosting.

Thomas