| PHP
is an open source programming language
PHP
is a programming language that allows your
website to go beyond a basic HTML document,
and create an interactive experience. Open
source means that the source code is available
to someone with proper access to the site,
so that they can easily make changes.
When
the Web was first getting started, most
of the pages on websites were basic HTML
documents. Meaning that when you visited
a page (about.html, for example), you downloaded
all of the content of the page into your
browser.
How
Do I Know if I have a PHP Site?
If
you are visiting a site, and you see that
the page name ends with .html, this means
that the page is most likely a plain old
HTML page.
If the page name ends in .php, then you
the site is a php based site. Other dynamic
programming languages include .jsp (Java
Server Pages) or .asp (.NET or Active Server
Pages). Occasionally you'll see sites that
end in .html that have dynamic code embedded
in them, but this requires some tricks to
accomplish on the server.
We
have several sites that use static HTML
pages and have great results. The Adventure
Rabbi is one such site. There are some
pages that have dynamic content, but most
of the pages are built in straight HTML.
It's great for search engine optimization,
as some of those pages have been active
for years. However, as the number of pages
grow, it becomes increasingly difficult
to update menu or navigation items, because
it means you have to open each page, one
at a time, and modify the contents.
Advantage
of PHP
 PHP
works a little differently. Instead of downloading
the entire page (with the navigation, content
and everything in one file), php allows
you to embed programming code that isn't
displayed to the end user. This programming
code allows you to tell the page, "Insert
the top navigation here."
Or, "put the content for the page over
there."
PHP allows you to personalize a page, for
example, or automatically detect that a
user is coming into the site from a mobile
device and display a different version of
the site that is optimized for their Blackberry
or iPhone.
PHP
keeps most of the code for the site "behind
the scenes" so that the page that is
displayed to the end user loads quickly
and doesn't require the browser to do processing
work -- the work is handled instead by the
server.
PHP
Is Ideal For Working With Databases
 One
of the biggest advantage of a programming
language like PHP is that it allows you
to easily interact with a database. If you're
unfamiliar with databases, think of a database
as a souped-up form of an Excel spreadsheet.
You have columns (i.e. page name, content,
title) and rows. Rows typically would hold
information that is organized by column
headings.
PHP
makes it easy to read information from a
database, and then display information onto
a web page. So, if you've ever used a site
where you type in your zip code to find
a store location near you, the system likely
is taking your zip code, performing a database
query (i.e. find all stores within 10 miles
of the 80303 zip code) and display the results
so that you can find your way. In order
to do this, we have a geolocation database
that allows us to tell the approximate distance
between two zip codes.
You
could do the same thing by building out
a series of web pages that has each location.
And while this is fine for three or four
locations, as the number of locations increases,
PHP allows you to automate the process.
Keep
Content Organized
 One
of the ways we've been able to streamline
the process of building websites is that
we've standardized our process using our
PageDirector content management system.
There
are many, many ways to build websites. Each
designer seems to have a slightly different
way of putting a site together. We are frequently
asked to work on sites that other people
have created, and in order to make simple
changes to the content or navigation, we
often have to dig around in the code to
find where things are located. This takes
time and isn't very efficient.
The PageDirector system, however, keeps
all of the content for the site neatly organized
in a database table. So that anyone can
easily find the content and make changes
quickly and easily.
Said
one of our clients in an email to me yesterday,
"It's really efficient and a simple
tool to use PageDirector. It makes my life
easier being able to update the website
fast."
How
Does It Work?
When
someone clicks on a link to go to a page,
the system pulls the right content from
the database, grabs the menu items from
another location, and on-the-fly creates
the page for a person.
Summary:
PHP
is a server-based programming language that
allows you to create an interactive experience
for your site visitors, and keep content
and other information organized within a
database. |
