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PHP can save you a lot of money.
What is this PHP Anyway?
Few people including serious users realize that PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, which is sort of an inside joke as the letters don't really fit. PHP is the most widely used web programming language. If you are not interested in programming for the Internet, there is no real reason to get involved with PHP. But if you want to program web pages, PHP is an excellent, relatively easy to learn tool. You won't be working with PHP exclusively. Most PHP programs include a lot of HTML. More and more of them contain XML modules, a newer, more powerful language that often replaces HTML.
How does PHP fit in a web solution?
PHP is part of the LAMP open-source solution. Open-source essentially means free. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Linux is an operating system serving as a basis for the other LAMP components and software that you want to run. We present the Linux operating system in a companion web site www.linux4windows.com focusing on Damn Small Linux, a version of Linux that runs on just about any Windows computer. Apache is the world's most widely used web server. Our PHP download tutorial shows you how to download and install Apache; it's legal and it's free. MySQL is an extremely popular database management system. There are over 100 million copies running. An estimated 50 thousand people a day are downloading MySQL. Our PHP download tutorial shows you how to download and install MySQL; it's legal and it's free. As our domain name indicates, we show you how to run PHP on Windows systems. But when you are ready to do serious PHP work, you may prefer to go for a full LAMP system and push your Windows aside. Many, many web professionals do just that.
Status Report
This is a brand new site. We couldn't wait to get the site up and running until we had lots of material. We are including this status report so that you will know what is available NOW. As we add material we update the report. Don't worry, even when we have enough material to remove the status report we will continue to update this site. The FAQ and Privacy Policy statements are ready so you can know how we plan to do things.
At present our Articles section contains four articles that introduce PHP and explain some of the reasons that you should learn this program and even go for a PHP certification.
At present our Tutorials section contains two fairly extensive tutorials. The first tutorial shows detail how to download and install PHP, Apache, and MySQL and runs two simple PHP programs. The second tutorial steps you through simple PHP errors. Both tutorials contain exercises to further your understanding.