I didnt realize until only recently that everything you type into you terminal window gets logged. So if you ever want to recall your previous bash scripts open your terminal and simply type

history

Which will return the log dump of your bash history, every command you have ever typed. Great if you cant remember exactly which vnc server you installed last year to get a headless server running flex unit or whatever may have slipped your mind. Test

First thing your going to want to do on a fresh install is update your repository sources list otherwise your box is pretty much useless.

Update Sources List

sudo apt-get update

Now your repository is updated and ready for installs

Install LAMP

sudo apt-get install apache2
sudo apt-get install php5
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
sudo apt-get install mysql-server

If / when prompted set your mysql root password. Next edit bind-address in /etc/mysql/my.cnf and replacing its value (127.0.0.1) by your IP address

sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Install phpMyAdmin

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql phpmyadmin

Now edit the apache2 configuration file to include phpMyAdmin

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

At the end of the file add the following two lines

# Include phpmyadmin configuration
Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

For good measure restart apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now lets get phpMyAdmin to work with php5

sudo apt-get install php5-mysql mysql-client

You’r going to need to add the following line to the php.ini file “extensions=mysql.so”

sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now that your done, make sure you chmod your web directory

sudo chmod 0777 /var/www -R

original sources
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/installing-php5-and-apache-on-ubuntu/
http://joeabiraad.com/linuxunix/installing-lamp-on-ubuntu-710-linuxapachemysqlphp/100
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ApacheMySQLPHP