basic of php

PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.

On these blog you find basic help for developing a complete HTML web site through using of PHP scripting language.

First for download php from these web site.
http://windows.php.net/download/

For run php application on your desktop you need a server to install and also install PHP.

As my opinion the WAMP server is best and when you install it the PHP and all nessesary future install it. So you can download wamp server from http://www.wampserver.com/en/ these web site. And editor is NetBeans it’s free to download from http://netbeans.org/downloads/ these site.

PHP stands for Hypertext Pre-Processor. As is suggested by the name, PHP is a pre-processor for hypertext. PHP runs on a remote Web server to process a Web page before it is loaded in a browser. Despite its powerful features, PHP is quite a simple language that has been designed specifically for developing and working with Web pages. Its syntax is similar to that of C and Perl. However, knowledge of both of these languages is not a prerequisite for getting started with PHP, so you can rest easy.

Fundamental feature of PHP

1. ·         It is an open source, server-side scripting language.
2. ·         It is operating-system independent and thus can be used on any operating system, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux, HP-UX, and Solaris, to name a few.
3. ·         It supports a wide range of Web servers, such as Apache, Microsoft Internet Information Server, Netscape, and iPlanet.
4. ·         It supports a large number of databases, such as MySQL, Ingres, Sybase, Oracle, Base, Informix, FrontBase, and Unix dbm. One of the distinctive features of PHP is that it provides support to database-driven e-commerce Web sites.
5. ·         It is simpler to write codes in PHP than in other scripting languages.
6. ·         It can be used for creating images, reading/writing files, and sending e-mail. To provide these services, PHP communicates with many protocols, such as HTTP, POP3, SNMP, LDAP, and IMAP.
7. ·         In terms of its performance, you can compare PHP with Active Server Pages (ASP). PHP is popular on Linux platforms, as ASP is popular on Windows. However, cross-platform support provided by PHP makes it score over ASP. PHP can be used as effectively on Windows platforms as on any other platform.
8. ·         Unlike many other scripting languages, such as ASP, PHP comes with a built-in compiler that compiles PHP code and can detect errors in it. You can rectify the mistakes in your PHP code based on the mistakes pointed out by the compiler. No such compiler that compiles ASP code is available with ASP.
9. ·         Another significant feature of PHP is its portability. PHP is compatible with any combination of software, and this is what makes it portable. It can work with almost any combination of operating system, Web server, and database server.

New feature

1. ·         Support for Boolean data type. Support for Java and XML. Support for COM/DCOM. This support is available only for Windows. Support for FTP.
2. ·         The '= = =' operator. In addition to checking whether or not the two values are equal, this operator also checks whether the datatypes of these values are the same or not.
3. ·         The ability to call a function even before it is declared. This is accomplished by using the runtime binding of functions in PHP 4.
4. ·         The PHP highlighter. This feature enables you to view the source code instead of the complete script. This feature helps you to have a faster and better look at the source code.
5. ·         Support for variable assignment by reference. This helps you to link two variables so that the value of one variable is dependent on the value of the other variable. Thus, the value of the variable is updated automatically whenever a value is assigned to another variable.
6. ·         Server API (SAPI). This feature further enhances the support for Web servers.
7. ·         Support for many algorithms, namely Triple DES, MD5, Blowfish, and SHA1. Through the mcrypt library, PHP 4 supports full encryption.
8. ·         The ability to reference variables in PHP 4 by using quotes. Additionally, variable expansion is supported using double quotes.
9. ·         The php.ini file is simple to understand and configure.
10. ·         Better ways of creating classes and objects have been introduced.