PHP Tutorial

PHP is a powerful server-side scripting language for creating dynamic and interactive websites.

PHP is a widely-used, free, and efficient alternative to competitors such as Microsoft’s ASP. PHP is perfectly suited for Web development and can be embedded directly into HTML code.

The PHP syntax is very similar to Perl and C. PHP is often used together with Apache (webserver) on various operating systems.

It also supports ISAPI and can be used with Microsoft’s IIS on Windows.

PHP is a server-side scripting language.

What You Should Already Know Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:

• HTML

• Some scripting knowledge

What is PHP?

• PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor

• PHP is a server-side scripting language, like ASP

• PHP scripts are executed on the server

• PHP supports many databases (MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, Generic ODBC, etc.)

• PHP is an open-source software

• PHP is free to download and use

What is a PHP File?

• PHP files can contain text, HTML tags and scripts

• PHP files are returned to the browser as plain HTML

• PHP files have a file extension of “.php”, “.php3”, or “.phtml”

What is MySQL?

• MySQL is a database server

• MySQL is ideal for both small and large applications

• MySQL supports standard SQL

• MySQL compiles on a number of platforms

• MySQL is free to download and use PHP + MySQL

• PHP combined with MySQL are cross-platform (you can develop in Windows and serve on a Unix platform)

Why PHP?

• PHP runs on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.)

• PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)

• PHP is FREE to download from the official PHP resource: www.php.net

• PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side

 Where to Start?

To get access to a web server with PHP support, you can:

• Install Apache (or IIS) on your own server, install PHP, and MySQL

• Or find a web hosting plan with PHP and MySQL support.