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PHP Basics

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Getting Started with PHP

3:35 with Alena Holligan

After 20 years, PHP is one of the most widely used technologies on the internet today. The driving force behind PHP has always been to solve a problem and make things easier to do. There is no complicated installation, and you can embed PHP code directly into your HTML. PHP is a great choice for creating simple yet powerful web sites and applications.

PHP Credits

PHP History

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    [SOUND] Hi, I'm Alena, developer, teacher and lifelong learner. 0:01
    Let me be the first to welcome you to the PHP community. 0:08
    PHP is one of the most widely used technologies on the Internet today. 0:12
    I'm almost certain that you've heard of at least one of the many projects built on 0:16
    PHP, such as WordPress, Drupal, Wikipedia or Facebook. 0:21
    A conservative estimate is that 25% of the web is built on PHP. 0:26
    PHP started as a personal project for Rasmus Lerdorf for 0:31
    the maintenance of his personal webpage. 0:35
    At the beginning, PHP was an abbreviation for personal home page tools. 0:38
    As in PHP tools. 0:42
    In 1995 these PHP tools were released to the world and 0:44
    other developers learned about it and started to use it. 0:49
    Two programmers Andy Goodman and 0:52
    Steve Zeroski really liked PHP but they found it inefficient and lacking features 0:54
    they needed to power an e-commerce application that they were developing. 0:59
    They began collaborating with Rasmus in the development of a new 1:03
    independent programming language. 1:07
    This entirely new language was simply called PHP and 1:09
    now stands for PHP hypertext preprocessor. 1:13
    As an open source project, PHP has a core team of around ten developers. 1:17
    It also has other contributors that help with quality assurance, documentation, and 1:22
    suggestions for bug fixes and improvements. 1:27
    Besides the PHP core, there are also many frameworks and 1:30
    packages that you can use to add functionality to your programs. 1:34
    With so many people using PHP and 1:38
    contributing to the community the language continues to flourish. 1:40
    PHP turned 20 years old in 2015 and also saw the release of PHP seven. 1:45
    This major rewrite more than doubled the speed of the previous version. 1:51
    The driving force behind PHP has always been to solve a problem, and 1:56
    make things easier to do. 2:00
    To that end there's no complicated installation 2:02
    as most servers come pre-installed with PHP. 2:05
    It's also easy to use PHP to create a website. 2:08
    You can embed PHP code directly into your HTML 2:12
    by using code blocks then immediately preview the results in your browser. 2:15
    There's no need to compile your PHP code, as with some other languages. 2:20
    So you can get up and running quickly. 2:25
    PHP is a great choice for creating simple yet powerful websites and applications. 2:26
    PHP is a server side language. Simply defined, 2:32
    a server side language is one where the code is processed on the web's server. 2:36
    This server receives a request from a client, processes that script on 2:41
    the server, and then returns the results as an HTML response to the client machine. 2:45
    In other words, the server sends back plain HTML. 2:52
    Just like the kind you would write by hand to create a webpage. 2:56
    Your web browser is the client. 2:59
    So if you view the source code of a PHP file in a web browser, you should not see 3:01
    any PHP code only the HTML that the server outputs after processing the PHP program. 3:07
    In this course, I'm going to walk you through the basics of the language 3:14
    ranging from simple statements to conditionals. 3:17
    We'll be creating a simple unit converter as well as a daily exercise program. 3:20
    We'll then finish up by using those scripts on a webpage. 3:25
    I hope you're ready to get started because I'm excited to introduce you to 3:28
    the fascinating world of PHP. 3:32

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