PHP tags not properly processing

Hey Everyone,

So, I am not very experienced with PHP, but I feel pretty comfortable with it thus far as I am working on the "Simple PHP Application" project. Everything makes perfect sense to me and I have been able to properly replicate all of the code from the first handful of project videos. The only problem is, when I try to open my code files in the browser, anything in a php tag doesn't properly load. Instead, the browser just renders a blank space where the php ought to be.

I have xampp installed and running properly, with both Apache and MySQL activated. I have Wordpress installed for a site I am building and everything there seems to function properly (it locates php, css, and screenshot files for custom themes and so forth just fine), so I feel confident that I installed xampp correctly. It is as though, when I open a php file, the browser is attempting to process any php tags like html instead of sending them to the server to be processed first. I have checked, double checked, and triple checked my code, so I know this isn't the issue. Have I missed a setting somewhere in xampp or something? Any help would be awesome! Thanks.

-Nic