2026#

Manual PHP installation with debugging support in VSCode on Windows

Setting up PHP manually on Windows may sound intimidating at first, especially when there are many ready-made bundles and installers available. Those solutions can certainly be convenient, but they often hide important details about how PHP actually works.

In this guide, we will go through a clean manual installation of PHP on Windows, configure debugging support with Xdebug, and connect everything to Visual Studio Code using PHP Tools for Visual Studio Code.

Newsletter: PHP Tools for VS Code - March 2026

The latest updates to PHP Tools for Visual Studio Code introduce a broad set of improvements focused on developer productivity, language support, and deeper code intelligence. Across the past development cycle, the extension has gained new language features aligned with the latest PHP releases, expanded framework awareness, improved navigation and debugging workflows, and numerous refinements to code analysis.

Setting Up a Modern WordPress Plugin Dev Environment with VS Code (2026)

Developing WordPress plugins shouldn't mean cluttering your OS with PHP installations or getting lost in the wp-admin core folders. In this tutorial, we will build a professional, containerized environment using Docker and PHP Tools for VS Code from DEVSENSE.

What's New in PHP extension for Visual Studio Code (December 2025 – January 2026)

The end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026 brought another substantial update to the PHP extension for Visual Studio Code by DEVSENSE. This release focuses on deeper code understanding, smarter refactorings, better framework support, full alignment with the latest PHP language changes, and stability. Alongside major IntelliSense improvements and advanced generics support, we’ve also delivered significant performance optimizations to make your daily development smoother than ever.