Moving from CSS to PHP?

[justlukeyou]

I found Dynamic Drive extremely useful in creating my CSS site, in pirticular the colour codes were very useful, but how do move onto PHP. Ive tried a number of sites, even Wikipedia to try and understand PHP but I just cant come to terms with it. Is PHP better for certain sites?

[mburt]

PHP is a server-side language which lets you interact with other web-pages.
Basically it goes in a HTML file (but you have to use a .php extension) like so:

<?php
//PHP CODE GOES HERE
?>

When the file goes on the web, it is completely invisible to the user. Even if you download the php file, you get the results of that php script. So that's why php is good for processing passwords/usernames or any time of stored data.
That's php in a nut-shell.

PHP Functions/Manual/Reference: http://www.php.net/

[tech_support]

http://www.php-mysql-tutorial.com/

[kiwibrit]

PHP is a server-side language which lets you interact with other web-pages.
Basically it goes in a HTML file (but you have to use a .php extension)......

unless you configure the web server, or (more likely) use .htaccess to parse php to parse in html. Very handy if you want to use - say -php includes, but don't want to change the file extension.

[djr33]

Possible, but not usually a good idea. This will then overwork your php parser, for every single html page on the site.

[kiwibrit]

Possible, but not usually a good idea. This will then overwork your php parser, for every single html page on the site.

I've not had any problems thus far on a 60+page site, where php includes are now used throughout. The pages load fast and clean. Have you experience where there has been a problem?

[djr33]

::shrug::
That's a fairly small site, I guess. With only that many pages, probably no big issue, then. With 1,000 pages accessed by thousands of users every hour, then that's a problem.

[kiwibrit]

OK, thanks, I'll keep that in mind. The site is doing well - but for a niche manufacturer, so visitor numbers should never be excessive. I doubt if page numbers will exceed a hundred or so. I really don't want to reassign the php extension to all the htm pages - and 301 them. Would it be good practice to make all future pages (using php) on the site to be .php?