Sometime, my server can't show the PHP pages.

[Ekkaluck_k]

I'm a new PHP coder and I faced some problems while i'm using my computer as a local server. I've already installed the Apache HTTP server 1.3 and PHP4.0 on my computer and set it. After I have wrote some PHP code (Using Macromedia dreamweaver MX and 8), the browser (IE) can showed the result corectly at first (I used only "echo" for testing the server) . But after I edited some of the code or inputed some more advance codes (like input the string variance or using the "if" command) there is nothing showed on my browser (sometime showed only the old result but sometime completely blank). What is the solution for resolving that. Please help me.

PS. After I faced this problem, I tried to uninstall the older version and reinstall the newer ones, Apache 2 and PHP5. But I still got the same problem.

[justsomeone]

If PHP has been told not to show errors, and if there is an error in your PHP code, PHP will display a blank screen.

See here for how to tell PHP to display error messages. A good idea on a development server, a bad a idea on a production server.

[Ekkaluck_k]

Thank you for your help. But now I still face the same problem. I think my problem is not like what you said. Sometime after I have already finished the code and saved it, I can't open it. But after I close the dreamweaver and reopen again. I can view the PHP page correctly.

[justsomeone]

The steps I mentioned will show you will get PHP to report an actual error instead of a blank page. Until you do that, it will be very difficult for you to diagnose and solve the problem.

[Ekkaluck_k]

Thank you very much. Now I found the problem. The problem is that I can't use .<br/> as a line breaking tag. The only way I can do is just set this tag into a string ($newline) and use that string (.$newline) instead. What is the different between two of these and why can't I use this tag?

[bodzan]

You were using it like this:

echo "Something".<br />;

You can't use it like that but like this:

echo "Something <br />";

And the explanation is simple: <br /> and the other HTML tags are just that - HTML tags and they cannot be used in any way other than described in PHP. PHP is used to generate HTML page for the browser so that it can be seen. So when you want to show anything in PHP use echo and only then HTML tags...

If you were using it like:

echo "Something"."<br />";

That is just overkill but it should work and then I am at loss why it wouldn't work... :-)

[Ekkaluck_k]

Thanks to everybody very much. It's help me to understand PHP a lot more.

[Ekkaluck_k]

Thank you very much. It's help me to understand PHP a lot more.