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Well I don’t really have anything to say about the next vid in the VTC tutorials except that you may as well skip it ….. or not. It’s up to you. I wouldn’t mind getting my three minutes and eight seconds back. Just kidding. Basically they are trying to drum it in to us that php and html are different beasts. Pages generated by php are not the same as html. Server side scripts and client side scripts are not the same. They are different. Not the same. Got it?
This also means that when you view pages generated by php you won’t really see much of the code. Mostly just html.
Well, back to My first script, Video No.6.
This is an interesting video. It is very concise and brief but the script doesn’t do anything . That’s not exactly true. It does give an example of what was drummed into us in the previous video. I recommend that you watch it.
At this point I am going to temporally, at least, stop using the VTC videos. Why? In the previous video it gave us an example of a script and showed it in action but actually we haven’t set up a server or anything like that yet. In fact we don’t know how yet. I guess they assume we know about that kind of thing already. Well they may have mentioned that they did indeed assume we knew about that type of thing in a previous video.
Conclusion: This particular VTC video is not for complete beginners of php.
Next: Lynda.com
What you’ll need Pt. 2 (05:20)
What do you need? Knowledge. Knowledge of what?
- HTML (I’m OK here)
- Database Skills (I have none)
Luckily the VTC also provide MySQL training. According to this video, if you want to study php you should already know about databases. Well ,we’ll see.
They also recommend using the on-line php manual – here.
And if you need advice about php you can ask at this forum – phpbuilder.com .
In the previous post I mentioned that php is run on a server so it only makes sense that you will need a server software to test your php scripts. Anyway I will do things the easy way.
First let me tell you about my system. I am running a windows pc. Windows XP SP2, Pentium4 2.8GHz and 1GB of RAM. It is not necessary to have this power, it just happens to be what I have.
Video No.3: What you’ll need part 1 (05:20)
According to this video you need several types of software.
- Webserver (I’ll use Apache)
- PHP Engine
- Text Editor (I’ll use Dreamweaver but wordpad would probably do )
- Web Browser (I recommend Firefox but anything is probably OK)
- Database Management System (DBMS) (I’ll use MySQL)
This is just a list, don’t worry. I will explain how to get everything and how to install it and the good news is that you can get all the software you need for free.
There are about 16 free basic php videos on the VTC website and I have decided to go through them one by one and maybe same some people a bit of time.
Video No. 1: What is php? (01:02)
Answer: Its a programming language to add functions to web pages. (You have just saved 55 seconds)
Video No. 2: Data Flow (05:20)
The scripts for this programming language are not run on the users computer but on a server and the result is usually sent back in the form of html although it is certainly not restricted to html. It is called server side technology and as opposed to client side technology.
If you don’t understand this don’t worry about it, it will become clearer and if you are worried about not being able to test it without putting it on-line rest assured, you can set it up on your own pc, depending of course on your system. I will go through the whole process when I get there.
OK, I have given myself away, I do know a little about php but don’t worry it is very little and I don’t really remember it so it will be new to me again.
