Tutorials - PHP
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PHP stands for "Preprocessor Hypertext". This language was earlier developed by webmasters to monitor and manage their websites but within few years from it's birth, it became the most populer server side language. Yes , you heard right, it is a server side language. What is meant by server side language. Actually it differs from HTML in the manner that it is interpreted at server and not at client's machine. Hence it is the safe language. No body will be able to understand from browser's code view method, what you have coded. It is also the easiest server side language to learn. If you are familier with coding, it will not take much time for you to get command on this language. Now comes the best part, It is free. Yes it is completely free therefore more and more web hosts are installing PHP on their servers. If you are familier with HTML, it is time now to start learning PHP.
Like HTML, PHP also have an opening and closing tag set. Opening tag is "<?php" and closing tag is "?>". A typical php script will be like below...........
<?php
Your code goes here...........
?>
Browser starts interpreting when it gets the opening php tag( <?php ) and stops where it gets closing php tag( ?> ). Two more tags can be used as php tags. these are ( <? ...?>) and ASP tags( <% .......%> ). It all depends what settings you have made in your php.ini file. General and widely used convention for php tags is ( <?php .....?> ) only, hence we will use these tags only in upcoming lessons to learn php language.