To refresh this document, perhaps it would be worth mentioning more modern methods to serve php content under apache httpd.

Specifically, the preferred method is now fastcgi, using either of those recipes:

(mod_fastcgi, httpd 2.2)
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/php-fastcgi

(mod_fcgid, httpd 2.2)
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/php-fcgid

(mod_proxy_fcgi, httpd 2.4)
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/PHP-FPM

While the legacy mod_php approach is still applicable for some older installations, the fastcgi method is much faster, and require much less RAM to operate, based on similar traffic patterns.

Thank you!

Compiling PHP on Ubuntu boxes.

If you would like to compile PHP from source as opposed to relying on package maintainers, here's a list of packages, and commands you can run

STEP 1:
sudo apt-get install autoconf build-essential curl libtool \
  libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libxml2-dev libreadline7 \
  libreadline-dev libzip-dev libzip4 nginx openssl \
  pkg-config zlib1g-dev

So you don't overwrite any existing PHP installs on your system, install PHP in your home directory. Create a directory for the PHP binaries to live

    mkdir -p ~/bin/php7-latest/

STEP 2:
# download the latest PHP tarball, decompress it, then cd to the new directory.

STEP 3:
Configure PHP. Remove any options you don't need (like MySQL or Postgres (--with-pdo-pgsql))

./configure --prefix=$HOME/bin/php-latest \
    --enable-mysqlnd \
    --with-pdo-mysql \
    --with-pdo-mysql=mysqlnd \
    --with-pdo-pgsql=/usr/bin/pg_config \
    --enable-bcmath \
    --enable-fpm \
    --with-fpm-user=www-data \
    --with-fpm-group=www-data \
    --enable-mbstring \
    --enable-phpdbg \
    --enable-shmop \
    --enable-sockets \
    --enable-sysvmsg \
    --enable-sysvsem \
    --enable-sysvshm \
    --enable-zip \
    --with-libzip=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu \
    --with-zlib \
    --with-curl \
    --with-pear \
    --with-openssl \
    --enable-pcntl \
    --with-readline

STEP 4:
compile the binaries by typing: make

If no errors, install by typing: make install

STEP 5:
Copy the PHP.ini file to the install directory

    cp php.ini-development ~/bin/php-latest/lib/ 

STEP 6:

cd ~/bin/php-latest/etc; 
mv php-fpm.conf.default php-fpm.conf
mv php-fpm.d/www.conf.default php-fpm.d/www.conf

STEP 7:
create symbolic links for your for your binary files

   cd ~/bin
   ln -s php-latest/bin/php php
   ln -s php-latest/bin/php-cgi php-cgi
   ln -s php-latest/bin/php-config php-config
   ln -s php-latest/bin/phpize phpize
   ln -s php-latest/bin/phar.phar phar
   ln -s php-latest/bin/pear pear
   ln -s php-latest/bin/phpdbg phpdbg
   ln -s php-latest/sbin/php-fpm php-fpm

STEP 8: link your local PHP to the php command. You will need to logout then log back in for php to switch to the local version instead of the installed version

# add this to .bashrc
if [ -d "$HOME/bin" ] ; then
  PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"
fi

STEP 9: Start PHP-FPM

    sudo ~/bin/php7/sbin/php-fpm