After a number of requests, in this series we’re going to back to basics and will look at PHP from a beginner’s point of view. If you’re looking to expand your knowledge of PHP, and want to move beyond what the default server behaviors etc that Dreamweaver MX offers, to create more advanced sites, then this is the series for you, so that you can get to grips with PHP and really understand what's happening when you begin to handcode and add more powerful features to your web pages.
First, were going to look at how PHP actually works, and how the PHP code is processed on the web server, and how the web server knows which sections of the page represent PHP code. We then move on to look at the order in which certain PHP operations should be placed on the page, so that they can be processed in a logical order.
In the second half of this tutorial we look at how to create simple output using PHP, and setup variables which can be used to hold values which change during the course of the script. We then look at a range of different operators which can be used to work with the values in variables, ready for the next part of this tutorial where we will be looking at conditional processing.
Gareth has a range of skills, covering many computer and internet related subjects. He is proficient in many different languages including ASP and PHP, and is responsible for the setup and maintenance of both Windows and Linux servers on a daily basis.
In his daily web development work he uses the complete range of Macromedia software, including Dreamweaver MX, Flash MX, Fireworks MX and Director to build a number of websites and applications. Gareth has a close relationship with Macromedia, and as a member of Team Macromedia Dreamweaver, he has worked closely in the development of Dreamweaver, and was a beta tester for Dreamweaver MX.
On a daily basis he provides support for users in the Macromedia forums, answering questions and providing help on a range of different web related subjects. He has also written a number of free and commercial extensions for Dreamweaver MX, to further extend its capabilities using its native JavaScript API’s or C++.
As a web host, Gareth has worked with a range of different servers and operating systems, with the Linux OS as his personal favourite. Most of his development work is done using a combination of Linux, Apache and MySQL and he has written extensively about setting up this type of system, and also running Apache and MySQL under Windows.