PHP Tutorial: Introduction

Introduction

The PHP programming language is a server-side HTML embedded scripting language.

  • PHP stands for: Hypertext Preprocessor.
  • PHP is a server-side scripting language.
  • PHP is free and is an open source software product.
  • The PHP scripts are executed on the server.
  • PHP supports many databases (MySQL, Sybase, Oracle and many others.)
  • PHP runs on different platforms (Unix, Linux, Windows.)
  • PHP is compatible with almost all web-servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
  • A PHP file can contain plain text, HTML tags and scripts
  • The PHP files can have one of the following extensions: php, php3 or phtml.

PHP is a programming language used for developing dynamic websites. It is server side scripting language. PHP allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases.

Now a days, PHP is the most popular scripting language on the web. It is used to enhance web pages. With PHP, you can do things like create username and password login pages, check details from a form, create forums, picture galleries, surveys, and a whole lot more. If you've come across a web page that ends in PHP, then the author has written some programming code to liven up the plain, old HTML.

PHP is known as a server-sided language. That's because the PHP doesn't get executed on your computer, but on the computer you requested the page from. The results are then handed over to you, and displayed in your browser. Other scripting languages you may have heard of are ASP, Python and Perl. (You don't need to know any of these to make a start on PHP. In fact, these tutorials assume that you have no programming experience at all.)

The most popular explanation of just what PHP stands for is "Hypertext Pre-processor". But that would make it HPP, surely? An alternative explanation is that the initials come from the earliest version of the program, which was called Personal Home Page Tools. At least you get the letters "PHP" in the right order!
But PHP is so popular that if you're looking for a career in the web design/web scripting industry then you just have to know it! In these tutorials, we'll get you up and running. And, hopefully, it will be a lot easier than you think.

PHP is a scripting language, like HTML. That means that code does not need to be compiled before it gets used — it gets processed on the fly as necessary.

Five important characteristics make PHP's practical nature possible:

  • Simplicity
  • Efficiency
  • Security
  • Flexibility
  • Familiarity

 

First Program in PHP

Before you running PHP script you have to setup <a href=”#”>PHP environment</a>

Example: "Hello World" in PHP:

<?php

echo "Hello, World!";

?>

It will produce following result:

Hello, World!

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