There is so much more you can do with a php site than there is with a plain old html site, and although php may seem a bit baffling at first, it is really very easy to learn, and you only need to learn a very small amount to be able to start to use it effectively on your site!
So what is php, and what can it do?
php is basically a server side programming language. That makes it very different from html or javascript which are both client side programming languages, that are executed by your web browser on your computer, and not on the web server. What all that means is that a web browser can only read the html that you have hard coded into your web pages.
php runs on the web server, and can dynamically send and receive data between the web browser, and the web server. This makes it possible to do all sorts of things, and can really open up a whole new world for you and your visitors.
How can I learn php?
There are lots of books available for php & MySQL, and even if you don't have the time or motivation to read all about it, I recommend you get a good book for reference. You'll be able to turn to it when you start making your own scripts, to look things up.
By far the best, easiest, and fastest way to learn is to get an experienced php developer to teach you. It's unlikely that you will find one who is prepared to come to your home or office to do that with out charging you a fortune. However, video tutorials make it possible to look, listen and learn from an experienced php developer.
To get you started we have a page of php video tutorials to teach you php. In fact there are a total of 9.5 hours of php video tutorials available from this page, so it will do more than just get you started!
So how can I convert my site from html to php? Oh, and will my html stop working?
It's actually very easy to convert a web site from html to php, and no, it won't stop your html from working!
Your html content will function just the same if it's in a page file with the .php extension instead of the .html extension. This is because php is designed to work with html, and both php and html can be combined in one page. In fact, even if you decided never to use php in your pages, your pages could still have the .php extension, and would work just the same as ordinary .html pages.
Converting your html pages to php is really just a question of renaming the pages from page.html to page.php, and updating your links to point at the new page names. Another faster, but more complicated method would be to use a .htaccess file in your root directory, to pass .html pages as.php on the fly. Although it takes longer, I personally prefer the first method of manually changing all the web file extensions, as you know where you are then. However, be sure to remove the old .html files from your server after you have uploaded the pages with their new names. Another good tip is to set up a custom 404 page. A 404 page is the page displayed to a visitor when a page is missing. By customising it, you can direct the visitor to your start page.
Click here for our PHP Video Tutorials Page
