Introduction

The simplicity and convenience offered by PHP for building web pages is mind blowing.

This tutorial is based on what I taught myself last night, by referring to other people's PHP files. It is really basic and doesn't even touch on the capabilities of PHP. Really all you will learn here is one way to simplify the writing and maintenance of a web site, not necessarily the best way.

Advantages of PHP

• New: PHP is a new scripting language designed specifically for the Internet. There are lots of little snippets of code that in the past took a number of lines of code.
• Server-side: unlike javascript, PHP runs on the server, so the web author need only consider the demands of the server, not all the different platforms, OS's of the users around the world. A web browser does not have to have PHP on the local computer, in fact, I haven't got it. (Actually I have now).
• Adaptable: unlike perl/cgi, there is no need for an external script residing in a cgi-bin. PHP code can be added to any normal HTML web page at any time.

Disadvantages of PHP

• Server-side: in most cases people do not have it on their PCs, so testing of web pages cannot take place until they have been uploaded onto the server.
  • Newer operating systems do actually have PHP on them. Being designed to run on Unix, Unix/Linux computers have it or can download it for free and use it. Being Unix based, the new Mac OS has it. I think it can be made on run on one or more flavours of Windows.
• Can't think of any other disadvantages, but then I don't know enough about it yet.

So What?

If all of the above is gobbledegook, don't worry, all it says is, it's so good ya gotta learn it.