I'm still new to web designing thats why I dont know much about php scripting. Can you tell me whats the importance of such functiongs like mail() and other functions and that SMTP thing that are disabled on other free webhosting site?

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the mail() function allows your website to send email to anyone, containing anything you want it to. Its really useful for password recovery, confirming that a user has joined, mailing lists, and stuff like that. PHP is very useful if you spend the time to learn how to use it.

The main difference between PHP between HTML is that PHP is a dynamic language meaning that it can change what the user sees when they view your webpage. For example if I have a PHP page called hello.php, and it has this code:



and someone went to 'www.mysite.com/hello.php?name=chris' it would say



If you ever need any help with PHP you can PM me. I've been writing in PHP for 2 years now.

 

 

 

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Well, the other difference is that php is a server side language. This means the code is ran on the server when the user comes to the page and the result is then sent to them. This allows you to make pages that are user specific while not having to write multiple pages. Because of this you can do user-specific emails, logins, etc. since all the data is only accessable on the server so unless you write the code so that a user can edit it, it is pretty secure.

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Well the forum that you are asking this question about PHP i.e. on Trap17 forums is powered by a PHP software.
How does the forum work ?
It is a complex bit of code written to handle user input and give the output on a page requested based on who you (the user using the forum) and what group you belong to (generally guests or members).
This is the power of PHP combined with a database software like MySQL.

You can do so much with PHP programming , designing etc.
PHP also can edit images and make images.(Look at my sig it is dynamic).
It can send mails not by just the mail() funcyion that you were referring but it can connect directly to your SMTP server using fsockopen() and then give commands likely to the server.

If you have any problems post it here.
If you are looking where to start learning PHP from:
http://www.w3schools.com/

Hope this helps

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well one more thing about php is that it is totally free unlike other server side scripting languages like asp and asp.net, what you need to start working on php is a server that has a php server , the ideal and most often used one is apache which too is totally free and next thing you need to have is mysql again free which is the reason it is becoming more and more popular besides being a powerful and competent server side language ,everyday it is being downloaded thousands of times togather with apache and mysql and is mostly used in lunux based machines , but no need to get scared , you may as well run php codes on your windows OS by using IIS so apache is not a must for php, as far as i know you can do anything that can be done in asp or dotnet by using php too and it is only limited to your knowledge , the more you learn the more complex things you can do without much effort as it is developed with user friendliness in mind ,so you can start away coding right at noob level too, so keep up your interest in php and learn it and sure enough it will make your world be completely under your control

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PHP stands for Personal Home Page Hypertext Preprocessor hence the name PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, its a server side scripting language that's embedded into html documents, it enables you to create dynamic web applications that can do literally anything. PHP has similar commands to the C programming language. PHP works great with many databases such as MySQL, best bit is its free. its a great programming language to learn that's easy. if you want to learn php the best thing to do is read the manual http://www.php.net/manual/en/ what i do is if i get stuck on a bit of coding ill read the manual that covers that bit.
good luck

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Thanks for the info guys... It really helps alot. I'll just post my questions here in this forum. I'm interested in PHP because I'll be making a phpbb forum and I want it to be hosted on this hosting site because it has a quite good reputation. The problem is when I downloaded phpbb, I dont know what to do about it thats why I asked it here. Now I know why I cant edit / preview the php files on my computer because it need to be published on a server with php support. I thought being good in HTML is enough to make an advanced website. Thankz again guys.

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According to "Teach Yourself Php with MySQL," PHP originally sttod for Personal Home Page Tools, but was later renamed to PHP Hypertext Preproccessor.
And as everyone else mentioned, PHP is a powerful server-side scripting language. It's used for building many types of web applications including forums (like phpBB, SMF and IPB), content management systems (like Mambo/Joomla, PHP Nuke and others) and many more. I'll leave out the rest of my restatement of the obvious.

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