What is PHP ?

PHP is a scripting language that brings websites to life in the following ways:

• Sending feedback from your website directly to your mailbox

• Sending email with attachments

• Uploading files to a web page

• Watermarking images

• Generating thumbnails from larger images

• Displaying and updating information dynamically

• Using a database to display and store information

• Making websites searchable

• And much more . . .

PHP is easy to learn,it’s platform-neutral, so the same code runs on Windows, Mac OS X,
and Linux; and all the software you need to develop with PHP is open source and therefore
free.

PHP started out as Personal Home Page in 1995, but it was decided to change the name a couple of years later, as it was felt that Personal Home Page sounded like something for hobbyists, and didn’t do justice to the range of sophisticated features that had been added. Since then, PHP has developed even further, adding extensive support for objectoriented programming (OOP) in PHP 5. One of the language’s great attractions, though, is that it remains true to its roots. You can start writing useful scripts very quickly without the need to learn lots of theory, yet be confident in the knowledge that you’re using a technology
with the capability to develop industrial-strength applications. Although PHP supports OOP, it’s not an object-oriented language, and the scripts in this book concentrate on simpler techniques that are quick and easy to implement. If they help you to achieve what you want, great; if they inspire you to take your knowledge of PHP to the next level,even better.

Make no mistake, though. Using simple techniques doesn’t mean the solutions you’ll find in these pages aren’t powerful. They are.