Web Design Development Articles

Every business site needs good fresh content, which gives the customers something to learn about or enjoy while visiting your online business website. Maintaining a content driven website can be very time consuming and very detailed in order to present the best impression of your web presence, products and service. Rewriting clusters of HTML files to present a fresh new look would take endless hours of hard work. The answer to these problems is a website design that is database driven websites built with PHP and MySQL.

To appreciate data driven websites built with PHP & MySQL, you first must be familiar with the way in which a normal web page works. Standard non-database driven web pages will not change anytime the web page is loaded on a web browser. Nor will the standard web page change by use of clicking a graphic button. Normal web pages just load and unload. Standard web pages always look the same and their web content stay unchanged. Unless of course if there is new content or web designs manually uploaded to create a new version of the average web page. Data driven websites built with PHP and MySQL perform oppositely, as they are able to change every time they upload with out you having to make changes by hand. Data driven websites built with the use of PHP and MySQL are also enabled to change the content based on the actions that a user might do while visiting your website, for instance clicking on text or an image, on the same page, without loading another web page.

PHP is a general purpose, scripting language that is widely used in web site building. PHP is overall quite nicely balancing for web design development. Use of PHP also gives you the ability of embedding features into the HTML. MySQL is a free to use, open source database that is universally engaged with nearly all of the current server-side scripting languages including PHP. PHP & MySQL data driven websites are able to file and store information, and they are able to filter through their information and grab requested facts from their database, then insert that particular bit of info onto the web page every time it is loaded into a browser. When the information that is stored in a data driven website built with PHP & MySQL changes, the web pages linked to those databases automatically change as well.

Think for a moment of how an online banks website works. You are able to log in and check your bank balance. The account information is stored in the banks database that connects to a web page with data base programming, which lets you view your account information. Server side programming is another name for database driven website programming such as those built by PHP & MySQL. The reasoning is that the actions available to the web pages to connect to a database takes place on a server. Therefore every time a data driven web page as those built by PHP & MySQL are in process of being sent to be uploaded by the browser, automatically the server builds the requested web page and then sends a traditional HTML page to be uploaded by the browser. PHP & MySQL programmed data driven websites give the server instructions on how to build the web page request.

Any web designer or developer will tell you that they have to know a slew of coding languages just to make ends meet. Different clients require different web sites which, in turn, require different sets of codes and standards.

A basic page will be run with HTML (hyper text markup language) and CSS (Cascading style sheets) only. A more advanced page will incorporate JavaScript, a client-side programming language allowing dynamic content. From there programs like flash are used to make websites.

Serving as the backbone to many sites are server-side based programming languages. These languages run directly off the web site’s host server and aren’t affected by a browser. The use of these languages allows for even more dynamic content on the page.

One such type of language is called PHP (hypertext preprocessor). Written on a web server, the PHP language is then incorporated into the HTML of a website and displayed as .php site. PHP code is entered as the language and various web pages are the output.

PHP is similar to other server-side scripting languages such as ASP.NET, mod_perl, and JavaServer pages,

When a webpage is loaded that has a backbone in PHP the PHP code will be compiled and then ran. This means there’s an extra step in loading the website as opposed to simply loading the HTML (the website loads the HTML, which loads the PHP, which then displays the site as opposed to HTML only). There are such things as accelerators which can improve performance but most programmers are efficient enough to code less lines which improves speed. The load time compilation won’t be noticeable by most people.

PHP isn’t the most secure of server-side programming languages. It’s security vulnerability has increased year to year, ending at 34% in 2008. Luckily there are various patches and methods of increasing security. For instance you could install PHP as a CGI binary and it will add security.

The coding is similar to the coding of languages such as C, C++, Java and Perl. It includes IF conditions, Function returns, as well as FOR and WHILE loops.

Originally released in 1995, PHP has been running strong ever since. It is constantly being updated and the current version, 5.2.8 was released in December of 2008. Early in 2009 the next version, 5.3.0 will be released and version 6.0.0 is slated to come out sometime after that, but doesn’t have a particular date set.

PHP is as easy to use as server-side programming languages can be. If you have a knowledge in C, C++, Java, or Perl then the transition will probably be seamless, otherwise it’ll take a bit of learning. But most languages have a learning curve that isn’t set very high, in programming especially. When the basics are covered: the variables and general syntax, then the rest of the language from loops, to functions, to IF conditions come more naturally.

PHP is a great resource for web design and development and shouldn’t be ignored over similar server-side programming languages.