It's an Open Source scripting language. Running on the server, it parses a web page dynamically, so that every time a page is requested, the content is generated on the fly.
A better explanation can be found straight from the horse's mouth: php.net and another nice introduction is available from zend.com.
Basically, because it's easy… There are millions of tutorials, resources, code samples, full applications, forums, mailing lists, and other such goodies on the Internet today.
You can start with a basic web page with a single line of PHP code… and learn as much as you like at a pace that suits you. You don't need to know everything about PHP before you can use PHP.
4.3.9 on our PHP4 based f2o free account servers, 5.1.4 on our PHP5 f2o free account servers, and 4.4.2 on our paid account servers.
Your files should have the .php extension to be parsed correctly. However, you can alter this default setting by using an .htaccess file. For example:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .plum
would put all files ending in .html and .plum through the php parser.
Because the magic_quotes_gpc option is turned on for the PHP interpreter. This means that for all get/post/cookie transactions all single-quote('), double quote("), backslash(\) and NULL's are escaped with a backslash automatically. This is desirable if you will be sending these data to a database or another application that doesn't like unbalanced quotes showing up. This is equivalent to performing addslashes() to the string. You can use stripslashes()to remove any slashes in your data before sending to a WWW client.
Short tags are enabled but ASP tags aren't. So:
<? echo "f2o rocks!"; ?>
would work, but:
<% echo "f2o rocks!"; %>
wouldn't. Of course:
<?php echo "f2o rocks!"; ?>
works by default.
No.
Maybe you don't need the extension installed at compile time… see http://www.php.net/dl.
You may also be able to change
configuration settings using a .htaccess file or ini_set().
For more information on changing PHP settings, read this article on code portability.
If it still doesn't work, email us and ask if we can install it.
Yep! See the phpMyAdmin FAQ for more information.
MySQL is the only database enabled by default. When your account was created, a single MySQL database was made for you with the same name as the account. It can be administered through phpMyAdmin.
There are two ways to connect. You can either use mysql_connect() or mysql_pconnect().
Example code:
mysql_connect('localhost','YOUR USERNAME','YOUR PASSWORD');
mysql_select_db('YOUR DATABASE NAME');
Your database name is the same as your username.
An .htaccess file affects the directory it is in, and all subdirectories of that directory. So if you want your .htaccess file to affect all pages, then put it in the web root directory (e.g. /home/sites/username/www/public_html/).
PHP can be run on the command line, so reading this article will give you instructions on how to set up the mail filter.
It will only work on local files for security reasons.
display_errors is set to off by default. To turn it on, add the following line to a .htaccess file in your web directory:
php_flag display_errors on
You will also need to set error_reporting to 2047
by adding the following line:
php_value error_reporting 2047
Progressive Networks has a number of support options in addition to our FAQ's available for our members: