Introduction

If you are holding this in your hand, you probably have some knowledge about the web—either that or someone asked you to buy this book for them. Whatever the case, you have found a gold mine! From this book you learn the secrets to dynamic web sites with PHP.

What is dynamic content? Making a site change based on given information (hence the word dynamic). Perhaps you want to make a site where you can have several members who all store their own favorite links. Well, with PHP, you can make your site offer dynamically different links to each user, maybe based on recommendations or previous links. PHP gives you total control.

Who This Book Is For

You probably know better than I do who this book is for, but let me tell you what I think anyway: You are a beginning programmer, with little or no background in PHP. You may or may not have HTML experience. You are willing to take the time to learn PHP by following this book closely and trying to make programs of your own.

Your experience obviously doesn’t have to fit this exactly for you to benefit from this book. You may or may not be a teenager; many of my books’s readers are over 50 or under 13. The main thing is that you have a willingness to learn.

What is the minimum knowledge you need to succeed here? You should be able operate a computer well. If you can use your PC or Apple without any major difficulties, you will probably do fine in this book. This book is paced for a beginner, and topics work on a PC, Mac, or Linux computer. I have included information on how to install the software for PCs and Macs, but you can find Linux instructions on www.php.net.

If you ever have any problems with any of this, feel free to email me at [email protected].

How This Book Is Organized

The first few chapters introduce design and give a brief overview of the PHP language. You get a fast review of HTML and some PHP form design discussion. You learn about variables, constants, expressions, and operators. Then I begin talking about more-advanced PHP items. You learn about controlling program flow through loops and control statements, organizing with functions, and enhancing web scripts with strings and arrays. Starting with the chapter on cookies, you get into some more-advanced topics. You are introduced to sessions and file handling. Finally, you get to the appendices, which lists all the functions throughout the book, as well as external resources and what is on the CD.

All the source in this book is available on the CD. You just need to install your server (which I show you how to do in Chapter 1) before using any of it. Additionally, some of the figures were taken using different themes on a web browser. Don’t worry about the different themes—all of the source files should work as shown.