Introduction
PHP is a popular programming language that powers many websites. It originally started out as a way to make dynamic websites by generating HTML. Today it stands on its own as a general-purpose programming language and is available on most web hosting sites. Because of its roots, it is very easy to insert bits and pieces of PHP inside of standard HTML/XHTML code.
MySQL is a popular relational database management system. It is the standard database system available on web hosting sites. Although it works with many different programming languages, it is frequently paired with PHP.
Who This Book is For
This book is for beginners who have never programmed before or who have never worked with databases. It's also for those who have copied a few lines of PHP into their HTML pages and want to know more. General programming concepts are explained while you learn to program PHP and manipulate data with MySQL. If you already program other languages, this book may be too basic for you.
To get the most out of this book, you need to understand HTML and the basic concept of CSS. Much of the PHP that you do is aimed at creating HTML, so you need to know what you are trying to create.
What This Book Covers
This book teaches you to take a static website and turn it into a dynamic website run from a database using PHP and MySQL. You start by preparing your computer to run PHP and MySQL by downloading and installing free software. Next, you write your first PHP by including some PHP ...
