Reusing pieces of HTML code is a common way of making web sites (or web applications) more consistent, reliable, and more manageable. Even a small web site consisting of perhaps 20 or 30 web pages can benefit from reusing code for header and footer sections, for example. If the same header or footer is used across all the pages on the site, it makes sense to put the header and footer code in separate files, and then call those files to insert their contents where required.

PHP offers two statements that can be used for inserted the contents of one file inside another: include() and require(). These two statements are virtually identical, with the only real difference being that if require() fails, it gives a fatal error, whereas if include() fails it just gives a warning. For this reason I tend to use the include() statement as it just seems slightly more friendly.

So, to include the contents of a file called header.inc inside a web page called index.php, you would just need to insert the following line of code (wrapped in PHP opening and closing tags) inside index.php.

Include 'header.inc';

As PHP takes no notice of the extension used for the included file, you can use whatever extension you want to. Be careful though, if you put passwords inside an include file with a .inc extension, they will be visible. You can get around this by putting include files that contain sensitive information outside the document tree to prevent people from browsing to them.

In Part 2 we'll look at the use of functions when developing web sites and applications.

What is PHP?

PHP stands for PHP: HyperText Preprocessor, it is a server-side scripting language, and as the name goes, it is to create dynamic and interactive Websites for your visitors. Maybe you currently make your Websites in HTML? HTML alone cannot create dynamic Web pages, HTML is clearly defined as a static language, as it is always static and mainly is used for structuring (or styling, in some cases) a document (or a Web page, if you like).

What do we mean by server-side scripting?

You may already know, but HTML is a client-side language, so the browser translates the HTML code into "bytecode" that the computer can understand, and so the computer translates bytecode into what we can clearly understand, text, for example. Server-side scripting is a little different, a little bit more added to the story. As with PHP, server-side scripting languages have an interpreter inside a machine, that translates the code (in our case, PHP code) to HTML code (that the browser can understand), and then the same process will take place with the browser translating the HTML code to bytecode, and so forth. With server-side scripting languages, you don't need anything adding to your browser or computer, as the interpreter inside the machine that hosts the particular Website does most of the work.

What's the fuss with server-side scripting languages, then?

The thing that makes server-side scripting a must nowadays is because it can generate dynamic Web pages, but what do we mean by dynamic Web pages? Well, imagine you wanted to start a forum, and you used HTML. Okay, you used a form to submit the data and it is sent to your e-mail address, and you have to edit the static Web page every time you want a new post added. That, to me, would be the most annoying job of creating a Website. However, with PHP (or any other server-side scripting language, for that matter), can be completely automated, and you'd not have to edit your file even once! The thing that PHP does, is sends the form data to a different page, saves it in "pre-defined" variables (things that store a value), and using something called a "while loop" that continually loops all the posts saved in the Web page - and that's it! PHP stores the posts in a MySQL database (something that holds data, if you like, like member accounts, etc) and uses that as long-term memory.

But if we're talking about server-side scripting languages, what makes PHP different from the rest? Well, simply put, PHP is probably the best thing that has come into the server-side scripting genre. If you have heard about other scripting languages like Perl or ASP/ASP.NET, you'll come to find that they are extremely hard to learn from. Put it this way, the majority of Web developers that use ASP.NET, for example, are those who have come from a different programming background, like have known VBScript, or other languages that's in relation to ASP.NET, the same with Perl. The difference between PHP and the rest, is PHP is incredibly easy to learn, especially for the newbies towards this industry, and PHP has took several steps to ensure an easy introduction to those newbies to the world of programming. Let's do an example, lets see which is the easiest to understand, out of PHP, VBScript and Perl, by doing a simple "Hello World" program, that outputs text to a Web page:

PHP:

echo "This is some text that'll be shown in a Web page...";

VBScript/ASP.NET:

Response.Write("This is some text that'll be shown in a Web page...");

Perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "content-type: text/html nn";

print "This is some text that'll be shown in a Web page...";

Okay, now I am not going to say things like "well, obviously PHP is the easiest to understand" - as obviously, we all have different preferences, but what I can say is, that they all do the same thing. Which seems the most logical to you? In my opinion, the two most logical ones for me is PHP and VBScript/(ASP.NET).

Now it's up to you which one you want to go ahead with, experiment which one is best for you, after all, we all have dfferent tastes.

Good luck!

Below are a few resources to get started with PHP:

# - w3schools.com

# - php.net

# - mysql.com

Using Coldfusion dedicated server, web developers can build multi-functional websites, content publishing systems, e-commerce websites, and a host of other things. Coldfusion is an easy to learn, user friendly, tag based scripting language which has connectivity to enterprise level data and strong in built searching capabilities, all of which helps in creating brilliant web pages.

Developed by JJ and Jeremy Allaire and released as an Allaire product in July 1995, Coldfusion along with Allaire was acquired by Macromedia in 2001, while Macromedia in turn was sold to Adobe Systems in 2005. A Coldfusion dedicated server is an application server used to develop both computer software and dynamic websites. Products in the same category as that of Coldfusion are Microsoft ASP.NET, JavaServer Pages or PHP. ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) is the scripting language, similar in nature to JSP, ASP.NET, PHP and HTML is a brilliant and distinguishing feature of Coldfusion. Nonetheless it must be remembered that other CFML application servers apart from ColdFusion exist as does other compatible scripting languages like Actionscript and embedded scripts written in CFScript.

A Coldfusion dedicated server is generally used for data filled websites or intranets but remote services like SOAP web services and Flash remoting can also be generated using Coldfusion. Asynchronous forms like SMS and IMs can also be handled by Coldfusion thanks to the gateway interface, available in ColdFusion MX 7 Enterprise Edition.

Some of the value added services that come with Coldfusion are:

• generation of client-side code for form widgets and validation
• converting to PDF and FlashPaper from HTML
• database querying, regardless of platforms via ODBC or JDBC
• data retrieval from Active Directory, LDAP, POP, HTTP, FTP, Microsoft Exchange Server etc
• XML parsing, validation and querying
• client and server cache management
• clustering of server
• session, client, and application management
• Using Verity K2 for file indexing and searching
• Task scheduling
• GUI administration

Certain implementations of CFML allow enhanced functions like running in a .NET environment and image manipulation.