Chapter One
Getting Up and Running
PHP, which stands for HyperText Preprocessor, is widely used for creating programmed features for
Web sites because it is easy to learn and also because PHP syntax is drawn from other widely used
languages, making it familiar to many programmers. In this chapter we present a very brief history
of PHP, and then discuss the nature of PHP as it relates to the Web.
Before you can get into the nitty-gritty of programming with PHP5, you need a clear understanding
of how PHP programs work across the Web, and that obviously implies knowledge of the Web
protocol called HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP is the language or format for
communications from browser to Web server and back, and is therefore fundamental to many
aspects of PHP. HTTP gets some coverage in this chapter, and quite a bit more in Chapter 3.
You'll see how to properly setup PHP on a Linux server, and on a Windows server as well. PHP
programs run in conjunction with Web pages, which in turn run (or are distributed by) Web server
software (such as Apache or IIS), which in tur ... read full excerpt from Beginning PHP5 ebook
