diff --git a/_docs/developer/testing/install_php.md b/_docs/developer/testing/install_php.md
index 7181fb33..9bc1ed4e 100644
--- a/_docs/developer/testing/install_php.md
+++ b/_docs/developer/testing/install_php.md
@@ -23,6 +23,10 @@ If you are missing extensions you can install them with `PECL` which will be
 installed automatically with PHP, but you should have everything required by 
 default.
 
+### Windows
+
+Download [php 8.1](https://windows.php.net/download/) as a zip file under the thread safe category. Then extract the contents of the zip to a folder, and add the path to that folder to your path system variable. It's suggested that one extracts the contents of the zip to a folder called `php`, which can be put at `C:\php` for simplicity. You can then add `C:\php` to your path system environment variable.
+
 ------------- 
 
 Verify you have PHP installed correctly, submitty requires a version greater than 7.0
diff --git a/_docs/developer/testing/linting_static_analysis.md b/_docs/developer/testing/linting_static_analysis.md
index ff33e992..47fa50e9 100644
--- a/_docs/developer/testing/linting_static_analysis.md
+++ b/_docs/developer/testing/linting_static_analysis.md
@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ The following instructions were tested for Windows:
 
 1. First, you will need PHP installed on your host system first. See [Installing PHP](/developer/testing/install_php)*
 
-2. Next, you will need [Composer](https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md) installed on your host system as well.
+2. Next, you will need [Composer](https://getcomposer.org/download/) installed on your host system as well.
 	During this install, you will need to change settings in a php.ini file. Change the settings the prompt recommends.
 
 3. Run ``composer global require slevomat/coding-standard`` and ``composer global require "squizlabs/php_codesniffer=*"`` inside your terminal.
diff --git a/_docs/developer/testing/php_unit_tests.md b/_docs/developer/testing/php_unit_tests.md
index 56da8544..d548f365 100644
--- a/_docs/developer/testing/php_unit_tests.md
+++ b/_docs/developer/testing/php_unit_tests.md
@@ -6,36 +6,41 @@ category: Developer > Development Instructions > Continuous Integration Testing
 To validate the unit behavior of the site code, we utilize 
 [phpunit](https://phpunit.readthedocs.io/en/latest). 
 
+*If tests are failing for you even on main, you may need to run `apt install php-sqlite3`, especially if you haven't vagrant upped from scratch in a while.*
 
 ### Running PHP Unit Tests
 
-*You will need PHP installed on your host system first, see [Installing PHP](/developer/testing/install_php)*
+*If you are running on WSL and are seeing errors, remove `php` from the following commands.*
 
-To run the PHP unit test suite locally, `cd` to the `Submitty/site` directory and type:
+To run the PHP unit test suite in VM use the alias
 
-If you are running on WSL and are seeing errors, remove "`php`" from the following commands.
+```
+submitty_test php-unit
+```
+
+or
 
 ```
-php vendor/bin/phpunit
+sudo -u submitty_php php vendor/bin/phpunit
 ```
 
 To run just an individual class or test, you can use the `--filter` flag on PHPUnit.
 For example, to run the function `testInvalidProperty` would be
-`php vendor/bin/phpunit --filter testInvalidProperty` and running all
+`sudo -u submitty_php php vendor/bin/phpunit --filter testInvalidProperty` and running all
 of `AccessControlTester` would be
 `php vendor/bin/phpunit--filter AccessControlTester`. Be aware, filter
 can match against partial strings, so if you have two tests `testFoo` and `testFooBar`,
 running `--filter testFoo` will run them both. Alternatively, you can also directly run
 `phpunit` against a specific class by passing the path to the test class directly to
 `phpunit`, for example
-`php vendor/bin/phpunit tests/app/authentication/DatabaseAuthenticationTester.php` will run
+`sudo -u submitty_php php vendor/bin/phpunit tests/app/authentication/DatabaseAuthenticationTester.php` will run
 only the test methods in `DatabaseAuthenticationTester.php`.
 
 The two concepts above can be combined to run a specific test function in a specific
 class by doing:
 
 ```bash
-vendor/bin/phpunit --filter testFunction tests/app/path/to/TestClass.php
+sudo -u submitty_php php vendor/bin/phpunit --filter testFunction tests/app/path/to/TestClass.php
 ```
 
 You can pass in the `--debug` flag when using PHPUnit to see PHP output, this can be