Beginning PHP - Lesson 1 - Welcome to PHP - Coding / Development

Welcome to Beginning PHP!

So you have decided to start learning one of the most powerful Internet programming languages there is - Congratulations! Welcome to Beginning PHP, My name's David and together we will start discovering why over 22 million websites use PHP to generate amazing dynamic pages.

So what is PHP?

PHP was created in 1995 by an independent software developer named Rasmus Lerdorf. His first PHP script was a Perl/CGI program that kept a log of each visitor that came to his site. The script then displayed how many visits he had received on each page. He soon started receiving emails from other web masters across the Internet asking how he did this (a "Counter" as this is called, were very rare back then.) Because of the interest in his script he started to develop PHP into a new language, by adding more and more features to his script. Eventually, he decided to stop programming PHP in Perl/CGI, and start constructing it with a more powerful language, "C". Thus the interest in PHP keep growing as more features were added and soon other people started writing code for it. It is now one of the most popular languages on the Internet, with contributing programmers across the world.

Should I learn PHP?

As long as you want to...YES! There is not a person I can think of that would not benefit from the ability to post their own dynamic resume online, or have the capability to list their products or services on the World Wide Web (www). With knowledge of PHP you could do everything from running an Ebay Clone, to managing a Photography site, to building the next Xanga. Don't get me wrong though, you don't have to start the next Hotmail to find a use for PHP! It is just as important for giving small sites the leverage to succeed online.

Anything I should know before I start this course?

Yes - HTML. HTML (Hypertext markup Language) is the simplest formatting language on the web. While PHP, Perl, ASP, and others transfer and process information, HTML makes it look good. For example, think of Microsoft Word. What you type into Word is similar to the function that PHP serves - it supplies the data. But just typing text into MS Word doesn't look very good. That is where the formatting features of Word come in. You can change the size, color, position, and look of the text in your document with the features of MS Word. That is what HTML does.HTML makes the information that you output from PHP look good.
So that is why I recommend having a basic knowledge of HTML. If you don't know it already here are some good sites to help you learn this basic language.

What do I need?

This is a big question and mostly depends on how skilled you are with other aspects of the computer. PHP requires the core interpreter and function libraries that you have to get from http://www.php.net. No, window's does NOT come ready for PHP programming. (Some Linux distributions do however.) This leaves you with four choices when it comes to setting up the PHP language so that you can start programming.

Install and compile the binary distributions for PHP and/or "Apache" web server on your machine. (Advanced) visit php.net for more information.

Install EasyPHP from EasyPHP.org. (Easy, but only features PHP 4 and has some problems with Advanced Programs/scripts.)

Install WAMP (Windows Apache MySQL PHP) or LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) on your own machine, or better yet, on some OTHER machine on YOUR network. If you are on windows you can visit wampserver.com and download the newest release. (Intermediate)

The way I Recommend: Buy some web space on a server that supports PHP and MySQL. (about $5-10 dollars a month). I highly recommend 1and1.com. They are like the "walmart" of hosting companies. (The largest in the world) they offer hosting for as low as $2.99 a month for 5 Gigabytes of space and 10 MySQL Databases!!! Don't worry they don't skimp on features ether! (Free Domain and ".htaccess" support!)

After all, if you are learning PHP you are going to be using it anyway... so you might as well buy hosting space and a domain now before the name is taken. If you already have a web site your hosting company may already have PHP install on your server. (Call/Email them to be sure.)
If you don't want to pay for web space but want to put a site online I recommend that you look into some free hosting options like 100webspace.com or Dot Geek - or just choose the one that fits you from these lists: PHP Free Hosting List and PHP MySQL Free Hosting List.

But be cautious - they all have their non-monetary price!
Personally... I started out with Easyphp. It is a snap to install (it's an .exe file) and will get you running fast. It worked great while I was learning PHP and coding small scripts. Then I shopped around and after looking at many different hosting companies like "BlueHost" and "godaddy" I finally chose 1and1.com for a place on the internet to host my first site. Recently I deleted Easyphp as I needed more power for my advanced scripts and took an old computer and installed XP and WAMP on it so that I can build and test my sites on my own personal network and then upload the files to 1and1. So the choice is yours, just remember that if you install a web server, you need to SECURE it BEFORE YOU GO ONLINE! Otherwise someone might use it to gain control of your PC!

Is this where I should start if I have never used the web?

Actually? no one in the world will EVER ask this question, because no one in the world will ever visit this page until they know something about using the Internet, lol. So *smile, relax and lets get started on this fun adventure.

Links:
Melonfire: Intro to PHP

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Beginning PHP - Lesson 1 - Welcome to PHP

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