Is PHP Worth It?

[Enzyme Online]

I already know html and css and have been really successful with it.
I think the next step for me to take is creating databases for all of the products of my customers.
What I'm wondering is what are all of the benefits I could get from PHP and is it worth learning?

[cmuench]

I would definetly say php is worth learning. Its relatively easy to learn and the uses are endless. The best part of php I think is making a custom CMS for a website. Create an admin backend and then you have the client do all the editing. also once data is in the database you cann do cool stuff with it ie.. display when and how you want, create custom rss feeds, so on and so on.

[Enzyme Online]

what's CMS?

[cmuench]

Content Management Solutions

[kigoobe]

Enzyme, you should learn because

1. It's relatively easy to learn
2. Codes are short, you don't need to writes pages as in Java, hence time saving for you
3. You have a lot of people doing this, hence, in case of bug, you will get a relatively much quicker help
4. It's free and you don't need any investment, apart from buying a few books
5. Almost all servers support php code, hence, when you will look for a host, you won't need to break your hear to find a suitable host

[Enzyme Online]

thanks guys

with content management solutions, doesn't that take the content from the html file and therefore the search engines can't see the content??

[Rubble]

Php is great for displaying information from databases and creating dynamic pages.
For instance on my gallery http://www.rubble.info/gallery/gallery.php I have two pages ( could all be on one and I will sort that one day ). I also have an admin section that uploads the images resizing watermarking etc.
Anyway I am getting sidetracked - the code reads all the images from a directory and creates all the pages links etc. If I was doing this with plain html I would have to update the index page with the new thumbnail, create a new page with the image and create a link to the new image page every time I added a new image. If I was adding 10 or even more images think how long it would take !

[kigoobe]

with content management solutions, doesn't that take the content from the html file and therefore the search engines can't see the content??

What do you mean here?

[Enzyme Online]

What do you mean here?

when you say content management solutions, does that mean you put the content in the database and then php retrieves and displays the information?

In that case, search engines wouldn't be able to see the content because the content really isn't in the HTML file, it's in the database

[wonshikee]

when you say content management solutions, does that mean you put the content in the database and then php retrieves and displays the information?

In that case, search engines wouldn't be able to see the content because the content really isn't in the HTML file, it's in the database

whether its in an html file or database has no matter, its the same to the search engine crawlers.

learn how to use search engine friendly urls and its the same to the crawlers.

[Enzyme Online]

whether its in an html file or database has no matter, its the same to the search engine crawlers.

learn how to use search engine friendly urls and its the same to the crawlers.

okay, thanks.
do you know of a good online research to learn PHP?
don't I have to also learn MSQL?

[felgall]

You would probably do better to learn mySQL rather than MSQL. MSQL is more commonly used with .net rather than PHP.

[Kayzio]

One place I recommend is http://www.pixel2life.com, it has many tutorials on how to do different things and by looking at the code in these tutorials you can teach yourself how things work and what they do. Also check out http://www.tizag.com/phpT/ to start learning (basics of PHP).

[Rubble]

I think Tizag is a good referance as well.

One thing I used to do was download some code; study it and try some changes. If it worked that was good if it didn't try something else.

You can either setup a folder on your server or download something like XAMPP and install it on your PC to try things out.
XAMPP has loads of versions and you should be able to find one that is similar to your server.

[kyberfabrikken]

learn how to use search engine friendly urls and its the same to the crawlers.

Crawlers don't care if you use ampersands and equal-signs to separate words in your URL, or if you use forward-slashes. So-called search engine friendly URL's are no more nor less friendly to search engines, than other URLs. They may be friendlier to humans, though.

[kigoobe]

Also, if you are serious, buy yourself a few books. You can start with Kevin Yank's (see the books section of sitepoint) and then can go for php anthology (also in the books section).

[cranial-bore]

Crawlers don't care if you use ampersands and equal-signs to separate words in your URL, or if you use forward-slashes. So-called search engine friendly URL's are no more nor less friendly to search engines, than other URLs. They may be friendlier to humans, though.

Crawlers cast a more critical eye to URLs with a lot of parameters, particularly if a lot are numeric. They don't want to get caught in an infinite loop of indexing the same content where the parameters may not change the actual content.

Numeric category and product IDs also miss an opportunity to use keywords in the URL. Nobody searches for "category 28 product 162" (though I realise you can use words with traditional urls)

[Enzyme Online]

Crawlers don't care if you use ampersands and equal-signs to separate words in your URL, or if you use forward-slashes. So-called search engine friendly URL's are no more nor less friendly to search engines, than other URLs. They may be friendlier to humans, though.

if the link's more friendly to humans, then it's more friendly to search engines, just indirectly.
humans are more likely to click a link that comes up in the search engine that doesn't have all of those funky characters
that site would be clicked more and it would go up in search engines

[devbanana]

Enzyme, you should learn because

2. Codes are short, you don't need to writes pages as in Java, hence time saving for you

I wonder where you got this. Totally false from my view. The amount of work it takes for any language is about the same, or even shorter depending on what you're doing, unless you're programming in C++. Have you ever used java before to make such a claim?

3. You have a lot of people doing this, hence, in case of bug, you will get a relatively much quicker help

a lot of people use a lot of other languages too.

Anyway I think it depends on what you want to do. PHP is an excellent language to begin learning with.

[Enzyme Online]

I've done programming with java and other languages.
I agree with you. All of the languages take about the same amount of code except c++

[php_daemon]

[...]The amount of work it takes for any language is about the same, or even shorter depending on what you're doing, unless you're programming in C++. [...]

What about the assembly?

[devbanana]

yeah, lol, that pretty much goes without saying, unless you're building an OS.

[Ken11235]

In today's world of web development, knowlege of a server side language like PHP is almost a necessity. PHP is one of the most frequently used web programming languages. It allows you the create dynamic (changing) sites capable of responding to users. I'd definately suggest learning PHP.