OK... I'm old school. I still use HTML for my webpages, etc... but lately I've been wanting to get into some php stuff. How easy/hard is it to use php, is there a huge learning curve, do you really code everything by hand or are there any known WYSIWYG php apps? I think php looks real hot for a webpage, but I'm a total noob when it comes to it. Looking for any advice. I'm still in the process of doing google searches... so any help is appreciated.
PHP is a programming language that you can embed into a webpage. It is best used for dynamic content. The pages that the php scripts output are still HTML.
There are a TON of free PHP scripts that can be added to a site for all kinds of purposes. My bands use PHPNews, PHPGallery (for pictures), PHPMaillist (for mailing lists) and on and on. Because it is free, there are tons of resources out there for utilizing it. It won't make your site look better, but it can help it function more easily.
I picked up some PHP when designing our site. Confusing as heck. I had to create an PHP script for an online submission form. Worked out well. It forwards the form to my wife's email, in HTML format and sends an automated email out to the sender confirming receipt. Bailey helped me out quite a bit with some questions.
PHP is VERY easy to pick up. If you know what you want to do on your webpage, you can find almost any application example on the web. My favorite site for tips is: www.devshed.com. The forums on there are great too. Also The Experts Exchange.com is great. If you need any help, let me know.
Ditto. I'm in devshed as almanzam and provide some tips, but haven't gotten into PHP yet. Dreamweaver MX and 2004 MX has good tie-ins for PHP based on MySQL. I code in PERL and learned ASP because I was thrown in the waters.
