Moving on from HTML...

[TomWilko]

I understand the basics of HTML now and want to more advanced web-development. I hear and see a lot of sites that are ASP, PHP etc...which is the best one to move on to next? Here are my questions:

[-] What does it stand for i.e PHP?

[-] What advantages does it hold over HTML?

[-] What links are they on the internet for real basic coding?

[-] Can anyone recommend me a book?

Cheers

Wilko

[DaBeeeenster]

PHP stands for Personal Home Page I believe. Dont let that bother you though.

PHP, ASP, JSP etc. are not replacements for HTML. They are used to generate HTML. So for example if you had a table with the numbers 1 to 100 in each cell, instead of writing

<table><tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>3</td>
... etc
</tr></table>

You could do the following in a scripting language like ASP or PHP:

(this is in pseudo code so it wont work but you get the idea)

<table><tr>
loop from 1 to 100
<td>Output loop</td>
end loop
</tr></table>

See what I mean?

I'd advise learning php as it is fairly straightforward and has LOTS of internet resources. Check out php.net
for info on how to get started. You would do well downloading an apache + php + mysql package like bigapache:

http://www.bigapache.org/

Post back if you get stuck!

[TomWilko]

Cool, are those downloads free?

[Iain]

PHP is open source and therefore free unless you plan to use it for commercial reasons I believe.

For a good start on PHP and MySQL have a look here http://www.sitepoint.com/article/525

[TomWilko]

I currently have my webspace hosted by ntlworld. Its the standard one that comes with my Broadband - will this allow for PHP??

[Iain]

probably not but you need to check with NTL. Best to get a host that supports PHP and MySQL

[DaBeeeenster]

Originally posted by TomWilko
I currently have my webspace hosted by ntlworld. Its the standard one that comes with my Broadband - will this allow for PHP??

I dont think they do. Unless you need to actually publish stuff to the world you can develop on your own machine. Just download apache and php and away you go. It's all open source and all free.

[DaBeeeenster]

Originally posted by [Az]
PHP is open source and therefore free unless you plan to use it for commercial reasons I believe.

For a good start on PHP and MySQL have a look here http://www.sitepoint.com/article/525

hehe good site. I'm writing an article for them as we speak

[TomWilko]

Originally posted by DaBeeeenster
I dont think they do. Unless you need to actually publish stuff to the world you can develop on your own machine. Just download apache and php and away you go. It's all open source and all free.

But if i wanted to actually create a web-site for the world to see i would need to get with a company that supports PHP then?

[DaBeeeenster]

That's right yeah. Unless you have broadband and a server that you leave on all the time.

The cheapest people (that provide a decent service) seem to be 34sp.com...

[TomWilko]

I have found this site, what language is it done in? (hosted by NTL)

http://www.leedspool.com/

This is also written at the bottom of web-space pages that don't have an index.htm:

Apache/1.3.26 Server at homepage.ntlworld.com Port 80

[DaBeeeenster]

Looks like static HTML to me. I'd be very surprised if NTL provided PHP hosting tbh...

[MrFlibble]

Originally posted by DaBeeeenster
PHP stands for Personal Home Page I believe.

Nope.
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (It's a recursive acronym ) don't let that bother you though

On a more helpful note...

PHP is a good one to go with becase the syntax is pretty simple, and you can do a surprising amount with it. It becomes especially useful when combined with a database to write dynamic web pages
Simple analogy:
Say you had a site that listed recipes for every country in the world. You could write a web page for every country (that's a lot of pages!), and then add to them when new recipes come along, or you could put all the countries and recipes in a relational database, and write just a handful of pages in HTML with PHP interspersed within it. Voila, instant dynamic content that doesn't need to be changed by hand, just add new recipes to the database
You see? The power of PHP

[TomWilko]

I see, so its great for holding information and then returning it in a pre-set format?

[DaBeeeenster]

Originally posted by MrFlibble
Nope.
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (It's a recursive acronym ) don't let that bother you though

On a more helpful note...

PHP is a good one to go with becase the syntax is pretty simple, and you can do a surprising amount with it. It becomes especially useful when combined with a database to write dynamic web pages
Simple analogy:
Say you had a site that listed recipes for every country in the world. You could write a web page for every country (that's a lot of pages!), and then add to them when new recipes come along, or you could put all the countries and recipes in a relational database, and write just a handful of pages in HTML with PHP interspersed within it. Voila, instant dynamic content that doesn't need to be changed by hand, just add new recipes to the database
You see? The power of PHP

http://au.php.net/history

I guess we are both right

[DaBeeeenster]

Originally posted by TomWilko
I see, so its great for holding information and then returning it in a pre-set format?

Yeah scripting is very good for that sort of thing, but you can do lots more than just grabbing stuff from a database and generating HTMl out of it. PHP has a massive API that lets you do all sorts of things; send email, interact with the user for all sorts of applications, generate images and pdf documents, work with XML, connect to an LDAP database etc. etc. etc.