What is PHP and what can I do with it?
PHP (or PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a commonly used and simple, yet powerful Web server scripting language used for embedding dynamic content into HTML Web pages.
If you aren't familiar with PHP and aren't interested in writing your own programming code, you can still add dynamic content to your site by utilizing existing scripts. There are a multitude of free, downloadable PHP scripts already written and distributed on the Internet. You can also find many tutorials and resources at www.php.net.
PHP can be used in connecting to MySQL databases, generating dynamic data from XML files in your content directory and creating dynamic images for your site. Using PHP with a MySQL database lets you to run websites like Web portals, Web services, blog platforms and more.
Below is a small sample of the features you can add to your website using PHP:
- Blogs
- Guest Books
- Discussion Forums
- Mail Functions
- Password Generation
- Database Communication
- Auctions
- Calendars/Planners
- Games
- File Management
- Voting/Polling Features
