Introduction to PHP

In this section you are going to learn a powerful server side scripting language is called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor).

Pre knowledge required:

* HTML
* Basic scripting knowledge

About PHP

* PHP represents Hypertext Preprocessor
* PHP is a server-side scripting language, like ASP
* PHP scripts are executed on the server
* PHP supports many databases like: MySQL, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, PostgreSQL, Solid, Generic ODBC etc.
* PHP is an open source software
* PHP is free to download and configure.

Merits of PHP

* PHP runs on different platforms like: Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.
* PHP is compatible with almost all servers like: Apache, IIS, etc.
* PHP is free to download from the its official resource: www.php.net
* PHP is easy to understand and execute efficiently on the server side.

PHP File

* PHP files contain text, HTML tags and scripts
* It returned to the browser as plain HTML
* It has a file extension of ".php", ".php3", or ".phtml"

Requirement for PHP

If your server does not support to PHP, you must have to install PHP. Here is a link to learn how to install PHP: http://www.php.net/manual/en/install.php

If your server supports to PHP you have not required to do anything, you just create .php files in your web directory and run it on browser then the server will parse your php file. Because it is free, most web hosts offer PHP support.

Download PHP: Free Download PHP: http://www.php.net/downloads.php

Download MySQL Database: Free Download MySQL: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/index.html

Download Apache Server: Free Download Apache: http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi