Does anybody exactly know what the new programming language PHP for web pages is? I heard that this site uses this language.

PHP isn't new, it has been around for several years. What a magnificent language it is! It is primarily a language that uses variables and commands to do things. One of its best known abilities is to connect to a database, to retrieve/edit/add data to it.

This site is written in PHP, along with other languages. A good example of how this site uses PHP is on a page such as the profile. The profile page probably takes in a variable from the “PathInfo” and then fetches user info from a database based on the variable.. try it yourself.. go to your profile, and type in a random number.. this is the variable you are changing and it is getting different data everytime.. it is helpful if you are going to have many things that are the same, but do not want to create many pages. All the users profiles probably run off of one page.

But if you want to know the real info, wait for a reply from the sites admin.

except for database linkage, are there any other purposes for php?

PHP is a server-side apache module/ scripting engine. It is also the name of the language used to program for this engine. PHP lends much of it's syntax from C and Perl. PHP allows you to create dynamic, database-driven websites which is what it's most commonly used for. You can also create online stores, personalized websites (my.yahoo.com), etc.

PHP is fairly flexible and is becoming more common every day. It's a relativley new programming language compared to c, java, and perl. It's been around for a few years (since 94 I think). I'm more of a fan of Perl than PHP (I helped Bill Emkow solve his poser problem by creating some perl modules for his GB Message Board while back). If you have any specific questions email me.

Just a side note. There is another programming language which can do the same thing, and even more. Its ASP. Active server pages. Here's the official word from the Microsoft site: “Active Server Pages is an open, compile-free application environment in which you can combine HTML, scripts, and reusable ActiveX server components to create dynamic and powerful Web-based business solutions. Active Server Pages enables server-side scripting for IIS with native support for both VBScript and Jscript.” Its really a great tool, some find it eaiser to use than PHP.

Yes, ASP is easier than PHP, but I wouldn't say it could do more. Keep in mind ASP can only run on a Windows NT system running IIS. PHP (although intially an Apache module) can run any Unix/ Linux or hybrid on most webservers (Apache, Iplanet, etc). It can also run on an NT server under IIS as an ISAPI module (just like ASP, but much more stable – how ironic). Perl is the same way and it is a much stronger language than either PHP or ASP. The core “engine” of the site is written in Perl and the outer shell in PHP.

whoa…i need to learn programming…