Hello,

I will try to explain some features of php, a small tutorial.

1. What is HTML ?
The language HTML is quite simple. You can write some text, put some images, link to others pages. You can also change colors of your pages, text etc..

2. Why PHP ?
An HTML document is reading by your browser and it's hosting by a server. The server just display the document.
With PHP you can discuss with the server before it display the document. In fact you can give some instruction to a server before sending the page to the browser.
As you can see, you could have HTML and PHP in the same document.

3. And so ?
Because you can send some instructions before any other thing, the reader can't see these instructions. So you could say to the server to display one page or another one. For example a reader speak english and another speak german. you could say to the server to display a special page for each language.

4. That all ?
No, this communication permit you to connect to some database (Mysql basely) and this is very important. You can add, remove etc... into them.
You could also manipulate files and folders on the server.
Sending mail, postcards, message on a forum, guestbook, add your opinion, vote.....
The most different thing between HTML and PHP is to interact with your reader.


I hope my first tutorial is not write too bad.
The next step (and others) will explain the code PHP.

Good keep coming

PHP only parses code within its delimiters. Anything outside its delimiters is sent directly to the output and is not parsed by PHP. The most common delimiters are <?php and ?>, which are open and close delimiters respectively. <script language="php"> and </script> delimiters are also available.