Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and CSS, 2nd Edition

PHP Dynamic Linking

Because PHP is a programming language, and the output from it can be completely different for each user, it’s possible for an entire website to run from a single PHP web page. Each time the user clicks on something, the details can be sent back to the same web page, which decides what to do next according to the various cookies and/or other session details it may have stored.

But although it is possible to build an entire website this way, it’s not recommended, because your source code will grow and grow and start to become unwieldy, as it has to take account of every possible action a user could take.

Instead, it’s much more sensible to split your website development into different parts. For example, one distinct process is signing up for a website, along with all the checking this entails to validate an email address, check whether a username is already taken, and so on.

A second module might well be one for logging users in before handing them off to the main part of your website. Then you might have a messaging module with the facility for users to leave comments, a module containing links and useful information, another to allow uploading of images, and so on.

As long as you have created a means of tracking your users through your website by means of cookies or session variables (both of which we’ll look at more closely in later chapters), you can split your website up into sensible sections of PHP code, each one self-contained, and therefore treat yourself ...