PHP Tutorial 1

PHP is a powerful tool for making dynamic and interactive Web pages.
PHP is the widely-used, free, and efficient alternative to competitors such as Microsoft's ASP.
In our PHP tutorial you will learn about PHP, and how to execute scripts on your server

Pre-requisites
Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:
   • HTML/XHTML
   • JavaScript

What is PHP?
   • PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
   • PHP is a server-side scripting language, like ASP
   • PHP scripts are executed on the server
   • PHP supports many databases (MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, Generic ODBC, etc.)
   • PHP is an open source software
   • PHP is free to download and use

What is a PHP File?
   • PHP files can contain text, HTML tags and scripts
   • PHP files are returned to the browser as plain HTML
   • PHP files have a file extension of ".php", ".php3", or ".phtml"

What is MySQL?
   • MySQL is a database server
   • MySQL is ideal for both small and large applications
   • MySQL supports standard SQL
   • MySQL compiles on a number of platforms
   • MySQL is free to download and use

PHP + MySQL
   • PHP combined with MySQL are cross-platform (you can develop in Windows and serve on a Unix platform)

Why PHP?
   • PHP runs on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.)
   • PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
   • PHP is FREE to download from the official PHP resource: www.php.net
   • PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side

Where to Start?
To get access to a web server with PHP support, you can:
   • Install Apache (or IIS) on your own server, install PHP, and MySQL
   • Or find a web hosting plan with PHP and MySQL support