Learning PHP & MySQL, 2nd Edition

Chapter 17. Sample Application

You now know enough about PHP and MySQL to build full-featured web applications. These could be practically anything from web-based mail clients to online stores with shopping carts and checkout capabilities. For our demonstration, we’re going to work with blogs, as they’re currently quite popular. Even though there is excellent blog software available, this is the easiest example to get you rockin’ and rollin’ with PHP and MySQL.

A blog is short for weblog. It’s an improvement on the simple guestbook and forums that started appearing on web sites years ago. They’re now advanced enough to create mini-communities of people with similar interests or simply a place to post your rants about daily living. Blogs have been in the media as well. As Jeff Jarvis said in BuzzMachine (http://www.buzzmachine.com), " . . . just as the raw voice of blogs makes newspeople uncomfortable. It’s the sound of the future.” Some blog examples are:

• http://www.americablog.org/

• http://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2005/02/pushing-java-back-into-background-for.html

As you can see from these two blog examples, one is political, and the other is about Mark Watson’s life. Of course, we’ve been given permission to use these blogs as examples, but go ahead and type in blogs in Google, and almost 3.5 million hits display. Weblogs are a huge trend; there are sites such as http://www.blogexplosion.com/ where you can register your blog and drive more traffic to it, or http://www.blogarama.com/ ...