Basic Guide To PHP Coding
What is PHP Anyways?
PHP is one of the most commonly used, all purpose scripting languages for web development.
Basically, it is a set of coding used to create dynamic and interactive web pages, and helps you manage web development. It is a powerful tool to have when creating interactive, dynamic web pages. PHP usually always runs on a web server and can be embedded into HTML and then used to create cool web page content for your blog or web site. It is compatible with most web servers, and operating systems and can be used free of charge. PHP has been installed and used by over 20 million web pages and on over 1 million web servers.
PHP is a server-side scripting language that allows you to produce dynamic web pages with PHP and HTML. This means that, when a visitor comes to your page, the web server reads the PHP coding, and sends the information back to the viewer's browser and displays your web page. It is a free software licensed by PHP that can be used in standalone graphical applications and includes the ability to be use as a command line interface.
PHP Usage
Basically it is used for building, managing, and personalizing your web pages. It is a web development tool and generally runs on a web server. PHP code is usually used for dynamic content on a web page, but can also be used to control command line scripting and client side GUI applications. It is offered free of charge for and provides anyone the full source code to build, and customize their own web sites. It can be used on nearly all web servers and is compatible with most operating systems.
While it was mainly designed for the creation of dynamic web content, PHP is now mostly focused on server side scripting. In 2007, the PHP coding was noted as the most popular Apache module available, and had over 20 million web domains hosted on PHP servers. Many of the most popular web sites on the web are PHP coded which includes Facebook, Wikipedia, Yahoo!, Digg, YouTube, and many more. One of the most popular and important web sites for internet users, WordPress, is written in PHP and depend heavily on PHP coding.
- WordPress was structured based on the PHP language and coding and the entire platform of WordPress is built on PHP and CSS codes. WordPress is a a content management system that allows users to publish interactive blogs and web pages. It includes a number of tools, such as themes and plugins, that come along with it. All of WordPress is written in PHP and all of the WordPress applications use PHP language. Some of the most popular Wordpress applications, such WP Themes and WP Plugins, depend on the PHP codes. WordPress Themes wouldn't be so dynamic if it weren't for PHP.
If you are beginner to using PHP and want more information about it, try this introductory tutorial from the PHP website. This video tutorial on PHP and walks you through the basics to using and understanding PHP coding. It is very helpful to beginners learning about PHP.
More About PHP
Most web servers and web domains originally (and some still do) use HTML language. HTML coding was developed before PHP's time and was the original coding language used on the web. PHP was created to replace this HTML coding and was designed to allow the user more dynamic range than HTML coding.
PHP only absorbs code that fall inside its delimiters, and anything that falls outside these delimiters is sent to the output and PHP does not process this. The tags used for PHP are <?php to open and ?> to close PHP coded commands. The PHP engine takes all of the information inside the tags and processes the commands.
- Writing PHP: PHP scripts always fall between the two PHP tags, which tells the web server to read the commands inside the tags and process that only that information. Here are the three forms of tags you can use to write PHP code:
- <? PHP code here ?>
- <?php PHP code here php?>
- <script language="php"> PHP code here </script>
- So basically what you do is you write out these tags and then enter whatever phrase or command you want to be displayed inside these tags and the PHP engine will read and process this information. Here's an example:
- <?php Hi World, This is My Website php?> - This will display the phrase " Hi World, This is My Website" on your web page.
The PHP language syntax is very similar to other high level languages that follow the C style syntax. PHP and the C, C++, Java, and Perl, are all very alike in terms of language syntax. With PHP, you can also create your own commands and codes for your web development. Since PHP scripts are found inside HTML documents, you don't need any kind of editor to create pages, but you do need to be running on a PHP supported server. All you need is a simple text editor such as the generic Notepad found in almost every PC.
PHP History
PHP was originally called Personal Home Page, but was shortened to PHP later. PHP was originally designed in 1995 by IT programmer Rasmus Lerdorf and is now being further developed by the PHP Group. Lerdorf designed these PHP tools to replace the program he was using to manage his personal homepage. PHP began as a simple tool used to perform basic tasks on his web site, such as displaying images, and track statistics about his page. It has evolved over 14 years to now perform a huge variety of tasks that create dynamic, highly interactive web pages for users. There has been numerous times and the most current version is PHP 5.3. PHP 6.0 is the newest updated version and will be released in the near future.
Another Helpful Video
PHP Lessons and Tutorials
- Simple PHP - Learn everything there is to know about PHP in just 17 hours. This tutorial is great for a beginner and anyone interested in understanding PHP coding.
- PHP Powerhouse - This is a great 3 hour PHP training series that will teach you all you need to know about PHP coding. You can learn proven techniques with PHP without any prior knowledge!
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