Learning PHP

Hello World Program Before you can create the Hello World program in PHP,  you must be connected to some kind of web server, and a database server. You will then also need a workspace. The easiest thing to do is download "XAMPP" as it has the "Apache" web server and it is free. As for a workspace to write code, I will be using "Sublime Text". It is free and it's a quick download. You will need to go into your XAMPP configuration folder once it is downloaded and connect to 'MySQL' and 'Apache'. Then you will be able to open any file by typing in the URL "localhost/insertFileNameHere. The process to get up and running with PHP can seem a little complicated at first so feel free to comment with questions. The hello world program in PHP is very simple. The syntax looks like this: <?php echo "hello world";  ?> The program must open with PHP tags, much like a program in HTML would be embedded in <html...

PHP Invention and Background PHP was originally designed by Rasmus Lerdorf for his own personal use. That is where the original name (Personal Home Page) came from. He programmed it in C and used it at first to track visits to his online resume, but greater functionality was requested, so he expanded the program and added support for large databases. This is one of the most useful features of the language. PHP went through a phase where the name was changed briefly and it was considered a good CGI or Common Gateway Interface, but was not incredibly popular as a language. Shortly after this change, however, the PHP name was brought back and the language included what was considered at the time to be an advanced scripting language. The language has become the most widely used server side programming language. Many large websites including Wikipedia, Yahoo!, and Facebook. The language was intentionally designed similarly to C so that people who are familiar with that language could...