PHP Part 1: Setup and Introduction

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Introduction

Welcome to PHP beginner tutorial series. In this article you will learn how to setup PHP on your machine. PHP is a popular programming language used for developing dynamic web applications. It is a server-side scripting language, meaning that it runs on the server and generates HTML code that is sent to the client’s web browser. PHP is open source and free to use, and it can be integrated with a wide range of databases and web servers. It has a simple syntax that is easy to learn, making it an ideal choice for beginners. PHP is widely used for building content management systems, e-commerce websites, and other types of web applications.

Setup

Setting up PHP on Windows

To set up PHP on Windows, you’ll need to follow these steps:

Download PHP The first step is to download PHP for Windows from the official PHP website (https://windows.php.net/download/). Select the appropriate version for your system, download and extract the ZIP file to your preferred location.
Configure PHP Next, you need to configure PHP. Rename the php.ini-development file to php.ini, and open it in a text editor. Locate the extension_dir directive, uncomment it, and set it to the location of the ext folder in the PHP installation directory. Then, enable the extensions you need by uncommenting the appropriate lines.
Set up a web server You can use the built-in web server in PHP to run your PHP applications on your local machine. Open the Command Prompt or PowerShell and navigate to the directory where you’ve extracted PHP. Type php -S localhost:8000 to start the web server.
Test PHP Create a new file in the directory and name it index.php. Add the following code to the file:

<?php
echo "Hello, World!";
?>

Save the file and navigate to http://localhost:8000 in your web browser. You should see “Hello, World!” printed on the page.

Setting up PHP on Linux

To set up PHP on Linux, you can follow these steps:

Install PHP The first step is to install PHP. Depending on your Linux distribution, you can use the package manager to install PHP. For example, on Ubuntu, you can run the following command:

sudo apt-get install php

Configure PHP PHP should be configured correctly by default, but you may need to install additional extensions or modify the php.ini file. You can find the php.ini file in the /etc/php/7.4/apache2/ directory.
Set up a web server To run PHP on a Linux machine, you need to set up a web server such as Apache or Nginx. You can use your package manager to install the web server of your choice. For example, on Ubuntu, you can run the following command to install Apache:

sudo apt-get install apache2

Once the web server is installed, you can start it by running the following command:

sudo service apache2 start

Test PHP Create a new file in the /var/www/html/ directory and name it index.php. Add the following code to the file:

<?php
echo "Hello, World!";
?>

Save the file and navigate to http://localhost/ in your web browser. You should see “Hello, World!” printed on the page.

PHP Beginner Tutorial Series