PHP Basics: PHP basics and Installation, Getting started

PHP basics

Dear friends,

here i am explaining the basics of PHP (Installation, Configuration, basic Syntax , Building a simple web site etc) , i have gone through hundreds of tutorial in Net, and finally Decided to create one for Beginners who have the Basic knowledge of HTML , the Details given below is a mixture of my own and collected from net
if you find any error or any doubt please feel free to Contact me

What is PHP?

PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
PHP is a server-side scripting language, like ASP
PHP scripts are executed on the server
PHP supports many databases (MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, Generic ODBC, etc.)
PHP is an open source software
PHP is free to download and use

PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly."

This is generally a good definition of PHP. However, it does contain a lot of terms you may not be used to. Another way to think of PHP is a powerful, behind the scenes scripting language that your visitors won't see!

When someone visits your PHP webpage, your web server processes the PHP code. It then sees which parts it needs to show to visitors(content and pictures) and hides the other stuff(file operations, math calculations, etc.) then translates your PHP into HTML. After the translation into HTML, it sends the webpage to your visitor's web browser.

PHP was first created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995, and saw its first official release in 1997. Milestone releases included PHP 3 in 1998, PHP 4 in 2000, and PHP 5 in 2004. Today, many large-scale websites run on PHP. The author was first introduced to PHP in 2000, and have found the language to be pretty easy to work with. Below is a simple "Hello World" program, PHP flavor: <?php print "Hello World."; ?> Executing this program on a web server enabled with PHP produces the following output: Hello World.

What is a PHP File?

PHP files can contain text, HTML tags and scripts
PHP files are returned to the browser as plain HTML
PHP files have a file extension of ".php", ".php3", or ".phtml"

PHP Installation

Download PHP

Download PHP for free here: http://www.php.net/downloads.php

Download MySQL Database

Download MySQL for free here: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/

Download Apache Server

Download Apache for free here: http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi

You need to install all the Above separately and configure

Or you can Install AppServ -http://www.appservnetwork.com/

(AppServ is a full-featured of Apache, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin. You can setup in 1 minute.
        Package of AppServ
           - Apache
             - PHP
             - MySQL
             - phpMyAdmin )

(for this tutorial we have used widows 7 Operating system )

Installing AppServ

Download
Sourceforge.net : http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/appserv/appserv-win32-2.5.10.exe?download

1.then double click on the .exe file

2 .Give the Installation Directory - C:\AppServ (default)

3.Select the Package of AppServ

4.Give Server Name and email

5.Enter Root password ( NB: Remember this password)

6.Installation Successful

and open Browser and type http://localhost/phpinfo.php

if you are getting the following screen then your AppServe Installation is Successful

Writing your first PHP page

Basic PHP Syntax

A PHP script always starts with <?php and ends with ?>. A PHP script can be placed anywhere in the document.
On servers with shorthand-support, you can start a PHP script with <? and end with ?>.

where to put your PHP files in server