INTRODUCTION TO PHP

“PHP [Hypertext Preprocessor]”

In this post I’ll wrap about what is PHP and why you should use this. As mentioned in the official site of PHP [www.php.net], it is a widely-used general-purpose “scripting language” that is especially suited for “Web development” and can be “embedded into HTML”. If you are new to PHP and want to get some idea of how it works, then try their introductory tutorial. If you are a Web developer or want to be, then PHP will be widely used frequently. 

INTRODUCTION-

PHP stands for “Hypertext Preprocessor”. Regionally PHP stands for Personal Homepage but it now been changed to Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP is a server-side scripting language. So if you make PHP coding, it’s not accessible by the user of the website with PHP coding means they cannot view your coding by View Source option. With HTML being a markup language it is understood by the browser and PHP code inside it is understood by the web server. So it is compiled server-side and gives output on the website. 

FACEBOOK USE PHP-

The trendiest example for the use of PHP over web is Facebook. Facebook is a social networking website, store lots of data in database so we can combine PHP with database using Mysql, which is widely used powerful database around. This indicates that PHP is widely used in web today so it has a broad value in this period. 

GET STARTED- 

You will be required to test coding for PHP, for this you can check with your host that they allow PHP extension. But if you want to test this locally on computer then you can do this by using certain tool to make your computer a mini web server. 

TOOL RECOMMENDATIONS-

• “XAMPP” [ http://www.apachefriends.or/en/xampp.html]

• “WAMP” [ http://www.wampserver.com/en/ ]

I personally use Xampp, so I’ll tell you about the same but you can download Wamp and test the coding.

FOR XAMPP- Go to the above link to download this tool and I’ll recommend you to download the “Installer” for it. Then after installation you are ready to test your coding.

XAMPP CONTROL PANEL-

After complete installation, open the Xampp control panel application, you can see the above screenshot. It’s a control panel for the services included with the Xampp, which is available from Program Files in Windows. You want to make sure Apache and Mysql are running, if they are not running then simply click on “Start” button. 

TESTING WEB SERVER-

First thing we want to do is to test the web server. For that you’ll have to open localhost in browser, which can be done by opening 127.0.0.1 in address field or you can use “localhost” (without quotes). Just see below screenshot for this-

This shows that you have successfully installed Xampp to your system.

In my next post I’ll start with the coding in PHP. This post is simply the introductory one so I’m terminating it here. Have any doubts? Do feel free to leave a comment which will be soon cleared. Thanks for giving your precious time on this post. Have Peace..!!

Abhishek Kr.

About the Author:

Abhishek is 20 years old guy, currently living in Indore, India. He is a part time blogger.
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