I'm trying to use socket functions in PHP for the first time, but I've hit a roadblock right at the start and am hoping someone here knows about this stuff.

For the following line, I get an error.

The error is that socket_create function is not defined, but it's exactly like the example at http://us2.php.net/sockets .

So I read through other stuff on that page, and I see something about a special socket extension and something else about compiling extensions into PHP or loading them at runtime. What's this all about? Do I have to take an extra step before I can use these functions of PHP? What exactly does all that mean?

I found an old post of Crispy's where he mentioned something about that and said all he had to do was to reinstall, but I just did that and it didn't work.