newbie help :/

Anon

Ok.. I want to learn php for my website. I want it for 'content managing', you know, like for using '?page=main&ID=links' (note, this was copied off some other webapge) and then that would take you to the links page of my website.. that's basically what i want to learn. my host says that they have all versions on php installed (and i have seen websites there that have been using php) but i have no idea how to make it work :/ I mean, i added ( uplaoded to my website) a simple .php3 file, which was grabbed off of php.org (had to output 'hello') and then i did a 'http://mysite.myhost.com/hello.php3' in my browser and i got a blank page. i tried several other "free scripts" and the same thing happened, when i type in the url into my browser, i get a blank page.. why? i have no idea how php works, but i want to learn it.. so please help!

Anon

TRY
<?php phpinfo(); ?>

good day
gd

Anon

same problem here, sorry i don't understand the first response?

Anon

here try this, and go to php.net and read the articals here..

<a href="test.php?func=home">home</a>
 
<a href="test.php?func=links">links</a>
 
<a href="test.php?func=news">news</a>
 
<?php
if(!$func)
{
$func = "home";
}
if($func == home)
{
print("Hi this is home.");
}
if($func == links)
{
print("<a href=\"link1\">link1</a> <a href=\"link2\">link2</a>");
}
if($func == news)
{
print("this is the news.");
}
?>

save this file as test.php. you can also use the "include();" in-place of "print();" if you want.

mithril

dmented,

Try renaming the test scripts you uploaded from "filename.php3" to "filename.php" and see if that gives you some better luck. The ".php3" extension became depreciated with the release of PHP4 (it was decided that there was no need to use the version number in the extension). With the amazing growth in PHP use many more hosts are now offering PHP, but many of them probably don't support the old extension since they started with PHP4. HTH.

Cheers,

Geoff A. Virgo

Anon

okay, i renamed the files to .php and it worked. one more question, i want to be able to run php files OFFLINE. i already ran php 3 from php.net, but whenever i run a php file in my ie browser (offline of course) i get a blank page (like i did before w/ my host).. is there a way to make my browser accept the php files and run them? like i said, i already downloaded php 3... i want to do that because i dont want to keep on having to be online to run php off of my host..

mithril

PHP is a server-side language which means that you can't setup IE, Netscape, or any other kind of browser to display PHP pages. All the code parsing is done on the webserver and the resulting HTML code is sent to the browser. What you're going to have to do is install a webserver and PHP, then set the webserver up to parse PHP code.

You can download Apache from www.apache.org, your best bet since there's some pretty good reasons why Apache has 60% of the webserver marketshare..... like IIS sucks🙂 Alternatively, all versions of Windows from Win98 on come with some derivative of IIS.... PWS on Win98, a handicaped IIS on WinNT Workstation, and IIS on WinNT Server/Win2K Server. I'm not sure what comes with WinME. Either way, they can all be setup to run PHP. Read the docs in the installation section of the manual on www.php.net for instructions on how to configure the webserver your choose. You're probably also going to want to download a copy of mySQL from www.mysql.com since you'll most likely end up in some database-driven apps before too long.

When you download the PHP binary, if you grab the installer version (smaller download), make sure you also grab the zip version since the installer doesn't have any of the precompiled extensions like GD, zLib, etc. and you'll probably be wanting to use at least some of those before too long. HTH.

Cheers,

Geoff A. Virgo