Up until recently,
scripting on the internet was something which very few
people even attempted, let alone mastered. Recently
though, more and more people have been building their
own websites and scripting languages have become more
important. Because of this, scripting languages are
becomming easier to learn and PHP is one of the easiest
and most powerful yet.
What Is PHP?
PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and is a server-side
language. This means that the script is run on your
web server, not on the user's browser, so you do not
need to worry about compatibility issues. PHP is relatively
new (compared to languages such as Perl (CGI) and Java)
but is quickly becomming one of the most popular scripting
languages on the internet.
Why PHP?
You may be wondering why you should choose PHP over
other languages such as Perl or even why you should
learn a scripting language at all. I will deal with
learning scripting languages first. Learning a scripting
language, or even understanding one, can open up huge
new possibilities for your website. Although you can
download pre-made scripts from sites like Hotscripts,
these will often contain advertising for the author
or will not do exactly what you want. With an understanding
of a scripting language you can easily edit these scripts
to do what you want, or even create your own scripts.
Using scripts on your website allows you to add many
new 'interactive' features like feedback forms, guestbooks,
message boards, counters and even more advanced features
like portal systems, content management, advertising
managers etc. With these sort of things on your website
you will find that it gives a more professional image.
As well as this, anyone wanting to work in the site
development industry will find that it is much easier
to get a job if they know a scripting language.
What Do I Need?
As mentioned earlier, PHP is a server-side scripting
language. This means that, although your users will
not need to install new software, you web host will
need to have PHP set up on their server. It should be
listed as part of your package but if you don't know
if it is installed you can find out using the first
script in this tutorial. If you server does not support
PHP you can ask your web host to install it for you
as it is free to download and install. If you need a
low cost web host which supports PHP I would recommmend
HostRocket.
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