Problem History
I am interested in using zen cart. It is a free open source shopping cart for web based shops. The docs say to upload the all of the files to your server to install the zen cart, and create your shop. However I wish to create the shop locally

Problem
To start the installer you direct your web bowser to the file containing you zen cart files.
In my case /home/steve/public_html/Zencart1
When i do this locally I am presented with a list of files and not a web type page. This is because in need to enable my pc to auto-detect PHP filename extensions.
I use Suse 10.2 and have used YAST to try and locate the correct
program to do this, but there are loads of PHP type programs and i dont know which one to go for.
Any help would be appreciated.

First, look in your httpd.conf (somewhere in /etc, or /etc/apache, or /etc/httpd, ...) if there is a line like
or
It tells Apache to load the php module.

Then, in the same file, seek the directive "DirectoryIndex". It should be somewhat like this :
It tells to open the file index.html, then index.php (if the first one is not found) in the folder if you omit the file name (eg: if your URL is "http://localhost/www" and not "http://localhost/www/index.php"

If the php extension is php3, just add the extension at the line "AddType".

These explanations are for Apache 1, but it should be quite the same for Apache 2.

Thanks for your reply. I haven't had the time to follow your advice just yet but will do in the next few day. I will let you know how i get on.
Thanks again.