Practical use of PHP
It almost goes without saying that you will want your business website to be impressive, interactive and secure. All these features will make your website more effective in acquiring and retaining customers. But how to go about it so that it is stable, cost-effective and easy to manage? One popular solution is to use the PHP server-side scripting language to help you solve these problems.
What is PHP?
Created in 1995, PHP originally stood for "Personal Home Page" but is now generally understood as "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". It was originally designed for creating dynamic or more interactive websites. It is a widely used, open source, general purpose scripting language. PHP is a "high-level" language, which means that it is generally more human-friendly (and easier to learn) than other programming languages such as C, ASP, or ASP.net.
PHP was originally designed for use in web development, but quickly grew to become a much more robust language. The primary use of PHP is as an "embedded" scripting language, meaning that the actual PHP code is embedded within the HTML code. When used in this way, PHP allows your web server to process web pages before they are displayed in a user's web browser.
Advantages of PHP
PHP is popular because it can be embedded directly into HTML coding.
PHP can be used on all major operating systems and is supported by most web servers.
PHP's main focus is web development, so it has a fast development time and can handle scenarios much faster than some other web design languages.
The latest version of PHP is a very stable and mature language used for web programming similar to Java and Microsoft C#.
It's open source, so it's free!
Database: It is very easy to write simple scripts to allow your website to interact with the database.
Cross-Platform: Both the PHP engine and the PHP code can be used on almost any platform, making it extremely versatile.
Development Tools: You only need a text editor to work on PHP; you don't need any development environments or compilers.
What can you do with PHP?
PHP generally runs on a web server, taking PHP code as input and creating web pages as output, but you can also use it for command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications. PHP is an extremely versatile language that allows you to create high-end, stable websites with lots of bells and whistles. Here are just a few things you can do with PHP:
Create HTML web forms
Store information in databases
Remember website visitors (cookies and sessions)
Working with fields
Working with files (file management and downloads)
XML parsing and generation (also useful for a large number of products in e-commerce)
Check which browser your visitor is using
How does PHP work?
As its name ("PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor") suggests, PHP derives its power from server-side "preprocessing" of hypertext. This generally means that when a PHP script (saved as a .php file) runs on your web server, it performs programmed actions and returns HTML code that will then be sent back to your customer's web browser. The PHP script itself is not contained in the HTML that is sent to the browser, so the PHP code is invisible and safe to the user.
For example, let's look at the following simple PHP command. (This example is only meant to show basic PHP syntax in action. Any detailed discussion of PHP code is beyond the scope of this article.)
<?php echo "<p>Hello world"; ?>
In this statement
<?php
is the opening tag of PHP,
?>
is a closing tag and echo is a PHP instruction that tells PHP to output the text that follows it as plain HTML. The PHP software processes the PHP command and issues the following:
<p>Hello world</p>
This is a regular HTML command that is delivered to the user's browser. The PHP command itself is not delivered to the browser, so the user will never see any PHP commands.
Using PHP to improve your website.
PHP has many feature functions designed specifically for use on web pages, including the following:
1. Securing Your Website.
PHP can be used to secure your site (or certain areas of your site) so your customer must enter a valid username and password. This can be used to reward preferred customers and build an exclusive 'membership' component of your business.
2. Working with web forms.
PHP can display the HTML form and process the information that the user enters. This can be a great way to learn more about your customers by asking them to provide profile information and gathering information about their specific interests.
3. Communicate with your databases.
PHP is particularly adept at interacting with your databases and storing information from the user or retrieving information to display to the user. PHP takes care of connecting to and communicating with the database, so you don't need to know all the technical details to connect or exchange messages with the database. You tell PHP the name of the database and where it is located, and PHP takes care of the details. All major databases are currently supported by PHP.
4. Customer Loyalty Features.
You can also use PHP to create a number of different features on your website that will further help you build customer loyalty, including interactive polls, a guestbook, and a bulletin board.
The popularity of PHP is growing rapidly because it has many advantages over other technical solutions. PHP is fast (because it is embedded in HTML, the time to render and load a web page is relatively short), PHP is free (it is open source software), and PHP is universal (it runs on a wide range of operating systems, including Windows , Mac OS, Linux and most Unix variants).
Perhaps most importantly, PHP is a very well-established language. There are many user-run Internet communities that make a very large amount of information (and scripts) available. With so much experience, using PHP for certain dynamic functions can be a cost-effective and low-cost way to increase the stability of your website.
