Most people doing web programming use an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) type of program these days. Netbeans is among my my favorites for several reasons:
Forum focusing on the techniques of image manipulation and graphic creation within a variety of programs. Members can not only exchange ideas, but share files with each other so as to improve their skills.
CEBUG (Computer Erie Bay Users Group) is a regional user group serving Erie, Huron, Sandusky, Seneca, and Lorain counties within Ohio, USA with advice and tech news!
XAMPP is a totally free (open source) web development test server that - within one install - provides support for PHP and MySQL amongst other things within the Windows OS. There are version of this same software for other OS types such as Mac and Linux.
Those looking for a free FTP client should check out Filezilla a totally free (open source) program for moving files between your machine and the destination web server.
Notepad++ is a totally free (open source) source code editor program with lots of bells and whistles included a color coded syntax assistance. Can also function as a text editor as it does support spell checking.