I'm learning PHP, yeah! :)

Go for it!! Good luck What is PHP?

warewolf: PHP is a web scripting language used to interact with a database (MySQL). This site uses ASP, but a lot of other sites, such as LOS for example, use PHP.
In a nutshell, it allows you to make really cool web pages.

Great Paxx! I'm learning ASP and .NET... I hope... I get the stuff this weekend and my son is going to try to teach me. This could be one of those 'old dog / new tricks' scenarios...

Man, I already have problems, Grr...
I follow exactly the tutorial code and I get errors.
*sigh*

Skip and read further...

paxx, if you were a real man you'd learn Perl

Just kidding. Perl code looks like someone left the Cap Locks on and let his kid jump up and down on the keyboard.

Good luck with the PHP, you'll figure it out. It's something I'd like to mess around with someday.

asp.... php..... cfh.... what is the difference?

They're all langagues that are run on a web server that takes a web request, processes it returns a response in the form of HTML back to your browser

ASP is Microsoft's product (Active Server Pages) and uses VisualBasic Script and JScript to do this server side processing.
JSP is Suns' product (Java Server Pages) and is similar to ASP except that is uses Java as the language
PHP is an open source language that is used for the same purpose.
Perl (Mod Perl) is an other oopen source languag that is used for the same purpose.
Cold Fusion is a product by Allaire/Macromedia that does thes same as well. Its primarly a tag-based language though.

Its a matter of picking the language, web server/ Operating System you want to build your web application on.

PHP = paint hop pro

PHP is great. So easy to get up and running. Which reminds me I really need to reinstall my web server and update my pages.

IIS? Is that how others make there web pages run? I was not sure if I should use .asp, php, cfm, or jsp. Technically I see the difference but in the end don't they all coms out the same way? Is Access a MySQL? Access can punch out pages on request (but updating it means resaving the html file). This site is using asp. Why not php like DeviantArt? Or cfm? I was planning to play with all of them on deferent sites and see what the user responce is.

Cold fusion seems to make it easier to make a shopping cart for sales.

IIS is microsoft's web server. It processes ASP pages to produces HTML.
The other popular web server is Apache (http://www.apache.org). It's a free, open source web server. I'm not too sure what scripting languages its supports. I imagine it supports Perl ahd PHP.

Access is Microsoft's desktop database (though it can be used as a database for web site that don't get a lot of hits. Microsoft's industrial strength database is MS SQL Server.

MySQL is a free, open source database server often used as the database backend of web sites that are using open source technologies (Apache,Perl,PHP,...)

I myself prefer PHP over CGI or ASP. It is alot easier to work and deal with. I first taught myself cgi. Then when I stepped into PHP I had it down withen a couple of days. Glad I knew CGI before hand to give me a good concept of it, otherwise may have been just as long with CGI.

Personally I think traditional CGI is crap especially on OSs where process creation is expensive. traditional CGI was shelled out into a separate process and the output captured by the web server. Process creation on nix's is relatively lightweight so its not too bad. Process creation under Win NT is expensive and can hammer the server. Hence the fact that most backend stuff on NT is done via a pool of threads within a given process space.

Years ago I wanted to use PHP on WinNT but it was a hack in which stuff was shelled out. ugghh. I wouldn't touch it (at least on NT). I don't know how its implemented now. IIRC PHP has a nice set of functions for doing all manner of things.

Hmmm, Paxx knows PHP now. Lets see, your first duties are to start converting parts of WC to PHP. And once that is done then you can officially take over my duties as the janitor. MOOUHHHAAA

Hehehe! Pat!

Chris, actually, I installed MySQL and PHP on IIS (Windows XP). Runs fine. No problem so far... I think.

Cool. I'd love to give it a whirl on my system sometime (you can never geek out enough). I think I was trying to be too bleeding edge at the time.

So when paxx becomes janitor, can we kick him around too?

For those wanting some information or an easy book to read to get the baby steps in the language check out:
PHP fast & easy web development by Julie C. Meloni http://www.thickbook.com/

It is one of the best books I found back when I started to learn it, the nice thing is it teachs by practical examples or real world situations.

As for apache on a NT based system. I have fun apache with perl, and php(w/mysql) enabled on win nt and w2k machines without any problems, but you do have to make sure you run the right versions. You also have to go into some of the config files and direct the apache and etc to the correct folder and not the win98 folder.

BUt as said above if you want to learn a good language for building client interative and database sites definetly look into php, easy learning curve in comparison to Perl and etc.

php rocks? asp sucks??? jsp is old school? Cold Fusion (or cfm) is on bad.... shut your mouth???

So which one should be the one I start out with? My second site has allot of images and but not that interactive (like posts) but it does have a sign in area for extra features.

My first site will have different themes (like wincust) ad sign in but still no message board. and no uploads except wallpapers.

well, joetheblow, it depends.
Is the site hosted on Windows or Linux? How much traffic do you expect? How stable do you want it?
If you're hosted on Linux, I think you should go with PHP/MySQL. MySQL is simpler but is not relationnal. ProgreSQL is recommended is you need a relationnal dB.
If you're hosted on Windows, find out what are your options. Not a lot (if any) providers provide the hosting of PHP on Windows. The only choice then is ASP.
Unless you have a lot of money to afford MS SQL, you're only database choice for ASP pages will be Access. The problem with Access is that it's not very stable, but mainly that it limits the umber of simultaneous connections to 8. No more than 8 people at the same time can access the Access database.

Hope this helps.

Actually, MySQl, Access and ProgreSQL are all relational databases. Paxman is talking out of his neck here. Back to the books, paxxy.

For me there wasn't really much to choose from:
. php = free, javascript-esque syntax = cool
. asp = $$$, vb-script = evil
. cfm = $$$ = evil
. jsp = java = evil
. pl = chris was right about the monkey = evil

Ergo, php it is. Ain't live grand when you view things black and white!

Word of advice to paxxy now that he has stepped onto the Righteous Path: object oriented code is your friend!

Yep. If given an infinite number of monkeys who were to bang on an infinite number keyboards an infinite amount of time, staticically you would expect at least on .PL file to make sense to due to random chance. You'd be wrong

Hum, been told MySQL wasn't relational, oh well.

paxx, I think that a good person for you to ask if you have any doubts is Johanne, she is a PHP master

Hehehe! Already talked to her. Thanks though.
So far, I've managed to annoy 3 PHP programmer friends (including Johanne). Not bad for 3 days of learning.

Actually, the problem I had before was due to the fact that version 4.2 of PHP has the parameter "register_globals" in the PHP.INI set to off by default. I turned it back to ON and all my problems went away!
Thank you newsgroups.