Getting started with PHP

EasyPHP gets you up and running in just a few minutes.

By: Martin Ove

PHP plays a huge role in the internet today, but unlike JavaScript, HTML and the likes, you can’t just try it out by typing a few commands into a text file and opening it with your browser.

PHP has to be installed on a server, a fact that for a long time has kept me from learning the language. Luckily, I discovered EasyPHP, which does all the work for you in a few minutes.

EasyPHP installs a Apache server and then installs PHP on it. You can do that yourself of course. Here’s the Windows installation instructions from php.net.

Over at EasyPHP.org, things are a little bit simpler though. Check out the introduction, which will guide you through the first steps.

And you’re set!

After following the introduction at EasyPHP.org, there should be no more obstacles between you and getting familiar with PHP.

Now, you can head over to the PHP Tutorial on W3Schools.com and start learning!

Postscript

I’m not usually a fan of over-simplifying things. I’m sure that both the Apache server and the installation of PHP is quite doable, but in this case, there’s a point in taking a shortcut.

I’ve been working a lot with WordPress, which is written in PHP. It’s my experience that you’ll often come across issues, where some basic knowledge of PHP can be quite useful. An example could be simple string operators.

A while ago, I had to customize the line in the theme that says “Posted by [author] at [time and date]”. It was simple stuff, so there were no problems in fixing it, but I would have loved to know that the period sign joins strings in PHP, what the include function does and how the date module works in advance.