Network Handlers is a Search Engine Marketing and Website Development Company in Tampa, FL

Server Stuff You Need:

For PHP files to work you require a server with PHP installed on it or if you have a server host like Godaddy.com make sure it is enabled when you build your server share. You can install PHP, download from here at http://www.php.net. On the other hand if you are running a Linux server platform, PHP should already be installed and working.

For this tutorial we will not talk about a windows server environment as it is difficult to get PHP to work. If you want a true environment to learn like I did then I recommend Red Hat or Mandrake, especially if you're a Linux newbie.

PHP is often bundled with the open source database mysql, so this is required as well for you to download on the server for your learning since most php scripts also require mysql to store data. If you are planning to program your own scripts, you can use file databases instead. MySQL is server side, like php, database platform.

Let's get coding!

Now that you have a server and you a definition of PHP let us start with the piece of code. What's nice about php is that even though you are coding php, you can still code html. The php parser on the server will only parse php if you tell it to. To tell it to do so, you simply write the code:

<?php
code yadi yadi yah
?>

Anything outside of that is not parsed but simply sent directly to the client as it is. You can have as many php code parts as you want in your page. Also, in your apache configuration file, you can decide what file extensions will parse though php. If you plan to use php allot, you might as well add in .html and .htm so that even if you put php code in a .htm/.html file, it will still parse it. Parsing is simply the word used to say that the php is executed by the server and the execution result is sent to the client.

Our first script
Here is a simple script written with php:

<?php
echo("hello world"); //this is a comment
/* this is another comment */
?>

If you upload this to your server and open it, you should see the text display on the page "hello world". Also, two different type of comments have been added to show you how you can add comments to your code for your own needs. The first one is for single line comments, while the second one can be used for longer comments that take up more than one line.

You may ask yourself what the point of php is, since sure you can easily skip the php stuff and just write "hello world" and still get the same result. The next page will explain this to you, since there's WAY more to php then the echo() function!