Deciding between PHP and HTML

ILoveKnowledge

Hi all, my site is currently PHP. I'm sorry to sound naive but what direct benefits does PHP offer over HTML? I just wanted to know. Thanks!

NogDog

They are two different things: PHP is a programming language, HTML is a text mark-up language. If there is nothing about a page that requires programming (handling of form inputs, accessing data from a database, etc.) then HTML by itself is sufficient. If you need to perform any processing that HTML cannot handle by itself, then PHP may be a good option (or one of many other server-side processing options).

Another way to think of it is: HTML is static, PHP is dynamic. Since PHP is most often used in a web context (though it does not have to be), it most often is used hand in hand with HTML (or XHTML or XML) as the mark-up for the text that PHP outputs to the user.

Clear as mud now?

cretaceous

even for a basic site PHP can make day to day maintenance easier as pages can be assembled in blocks of functionality
e.g. navigation, top chunk with logo, bottom bit etc
each can be handled in a separate script
so you then get one piece of script where making a change affects all your pages

bradgrafelman

ILoveKnowledge;10983252 wrote:
Hi all, my site is currently PHP.

You mean your site uses PHP. Your site is still written in HTML. View the source code of the page you're on now and you'll see 0% PHP and 100% HTML (which might encompass things like CSS and Javascript).

BrightIdeas

cretaceous makes a very valid point... I used to have a mix of both, now I only have php files in my site... and include is your friend if you have sections which repeat on every page...

Derokorian

BrightIdeas;10983290 wrote:
cretaceous makes a very valid point... I used to have a mix of both, now I only have php files in my site... and include is your friend if you have sections which repeat on every page...

However you probably still have HTML within those php files. Instead of thinking of it as dynamic vs. static think of it as server-side vs client side. PHP processes stuff on the server and then sends things (often in HTML) to the the client. Where the client's browser then processes the HTML sent to it. Also, you can include html files in your php code. For example my page uses header.html and footer.html and then my index.php then includes them.