PHP is a scripting language embedded into HTML Web pages to create dynamic features. When your Internet browser requests a Web page with PHP components, the PHP code runs on the server and generates a Web page with unique content. That customized Web page is sent to your browser.
PHP is a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP) and Common Gateway Interface (CGI).
Functionality
Here are some examples of the things you can do with PHP:
- Create a guestbook
- Rotate advertisements
- Display number of page visits
- Display current time and date
- Create surveys
- Access databases and manipulate data
- Create a forum
Level of Difficulty
PHP Web pages require more skill to create than simple HTML pages because they contain embedded codes written in other programming languages, such as JavaScript and SQL.
Before you begin writing PHP, you must download a version of the software onto your computer, and you need to make sure your Web browser and server support the PHP file extension.
You can get some of the functionality of PHP without knowing how to write the code yourself by using open source scripts.
You can get some of the functionality of PHP without knowing how to write the code yourself by using open source scripts.