PHP is a term that you will come across in many different contexts when it comes to web hosting. Technically speaking, PHP is a server-side scripting language which gives Linux hosting the same capabilities as Windows. This is why you will hear it often used in conjunction with MySQL databases and HTML dynamic web pages. PHP, along with MySQL and HTML are the original versions of what ASP and FrontPage automatically accomplish these days. Whether you actively use PHP or just benefit from the result of what someone else has invented to make life easier for web developers, it is a good idea to be aware of its origins and what it can accomplish, even if you only ever use Windows products like FrontPage and ASP. This is because PHP code can be imported into Windows programs and there may be a time that you need to use it or at least understand how it works.
PHP (or Hypertext Preprocessor) is one of the many web development applications that is developed and updated by the free software community, specifically The PHP Group. PHP, which originally stood for Personal Home Page, was written in 1994 to replace Perl scripts to make creating dynamic web pages easier on the server side.
When you develop web pages, there are two sides to consider. The first is the client side, which concerns what kind of equipment and software viewers who visit your site have at their disposal to open up your pages. Whenever you rely solely on the viewer’s equipment and software to open your pages, you are taking your chances. This is because you have no idea what anyone’s setup is or how their browser or computer will process your pages, if at all. It is much better to have What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get web pages, or web pages that will open on every server in the same way. In order to do this, you have to manage your web pages on your web server so that they appear the same to everyone. This is why server side scripting was invented. Server side scripting allows you to develop dynamic web pages that are processed on your server to produce WYSIWYG dynamic web pages that are uniform on most every browser. Server side scripting also protects your code because it isn’t downloaded with your dynamic web pages.
PHP is popular with web developers because it is easy to use and also because it was developed using the C language so it works well with other open source applications. Once a web developer becomes aware of PHP and its uses, they discover the LAMP architecture, which is the most secure and stable configuration for PHP. LAMP is the bundling of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP; where Linux is the operating system, Apache is the server, MySQL is the server database, and PHP is the server scripting language. This is an advanced configuration for the casual web developer, but there are several reasons why it is used to create web sites. First, it is inexpensive. Most cheap web hosting packages either include it or provide support for it. If not, it is free or relatively inexpensive to download. It is also reliable. With so many people worldwide working on it, it PHP is continually being improved and updated, along with the other open source software like Apache, Linux and MySQL. It is also scalable, which means that as your web site grows larger and more complicated, PHP will handle it even though it is a relatively easy language to work with. In the context of LAMP, PHP is also one of the most secure scripting languages to work with, which is important if you are creating web pages that will store confidential information like credit card numbers on your server.
When web developers started using PHP to develop dynamic web pages that were processed on the server side, it was essentially to improve upon using CGI, or Common Gateway Interface to process dynamic web pages. In this case, CGI was being used as the interface that accepted the user’s request for the retrieval of a server side web page. Its job was to process that request, and then send the dynamic page back to the user’s server in the form of an HTML page. If this sounds like a slow process, it can be, because every page has to be processed individually as well as every single time it is asked for by the user. This can really slow a busy web site down, which is where PHP comes in to help. This is because PHP code is imbedded directly into the HTML page itself so there is no need for an external ‘processor’ such as CGI. The PHP code embedded in the web page pulls the requested results directly from your server and places it in the HTML page before it sends it back to the user. In other words, PHP code embedded in your web pages allows the results of the code pulled from your server’s databases to be inserted in the page and then sent out directly to the user, saving an extra step. This means that the dynamic pages can be called up by the user’s server and delivered just like any other WYSIWYG web pages, saving a lot of time for the user.
PHP also opens up a lot of other possibilities when it comes to creating and processing dynamic web pages. First of all, you can use PHP to create forms that will accept and then store your client’s information on your server’s databases. You can then create cookies that use your client’s information (which you can associate with a code in your database) to create a more personalized experience for repeat users and save them from re-entering their information every time the visit your site. PHP works well with many databases to store and retrieve information to be displayed on your web pages. MySQL is the most popular database among web developers because PHP and MYSQL are configured specifically work together. So besides creating dynamic and personalized web pages for your customers, PHP can help you create an entirely database driven website.
The fact that PHP can be used to create forms for your customers and keep their information for retrieval helps out with customer service because you can set up your MySQL database to retain all of the information needed when someone visits your web site. For example, you can give every customer a code and associate that code with all of the cell of information in the database that pertain to them like their address, phone number , and credit card and also give them the option to update that information right on the website. So, if their address changes they can update it themselves without having to send you an email. As well, you can update something like the status of an order in the data base that they can pull up through a form on the site. So you can both check for new information in real time without having to exchange emails. This is just one of the ways that PHP can make an ecommerce site really resonate.
PHP and MySQL can also help you create fresh-looking content for your web site. If you are on your own as a web developer, getting fresh content written and then coded to be put on your site can be time consuming and expensive. However, if you don’t have enough new content fairly often, both viewers and search engines can get tired of your web site and your ranking and traffic may go down. To deal with this problem, ingenious web developers realized that just like data such as phone numbers could be stored in a database, so could content. By using HTML templates for web pages, new content stored in a MySQL database could be imported into the pages using PHP just like other information. The result is content that changes as you change the PHP code to pull different content from the data base and send it out as a new HTML page. All you have to do is get new content and put it in the data base. Then you can pull it or replace as you like. This is a very simple process, but very effective.
All of this can be accomplished with Microsoft FrontPage as well, but the reason why many web developers choose to use PHP and MySQL is the price and the flexibility. Most low cost web hosting companies run on Linux and already include PHP and MySQL, or at least support it, so it is easy to get started with a database-driven website using these two applications. This also means that if you decide to change web hosts, you can take all of your files with you intact to another Linux Host. If you decide to use Microsoft FrontPage, it is much easier to use if you have never developed a web page before, but it is cost prohibitive because you have to pay for the FrontPage software as well as the more expensive Windows hosting environment. And while FrontPage will let you import PHP code and MySQL databases, you cannot export web pages created in FrontPage into other applications, and it is not recommended to use FrontPage on a Linux operating system.
All in all, if you are serious about web hosting but just getting started, the best thing to do is get an affordable web hosting package, use the free site builder to learn the basics of site design, and then start learning PHP and MySQL along with Linux to build a web site that is dynamic, scalable, and secure.
