[treehouse]

[PHP Paradise - Stage 1: Getting Started with PHP with Randy Hoyt]

Hi. I'm Randy. Welcome to PHP Paradise.

PHP is a programming language that can add advanced functionality to our web pages

and make them easier to maintain as our sites grow.

Before starting with PHP, you should already know a little about how web pages work

and be able to write some HTML and CSS.

If you don't, you might want to take a detour and head over to Website Waters first.

Once you're ready to learn PHP, we're going to build this online t-shirt store.

Visitors can browse through the collection of shirts

and look at details for a specific shirt.

We'll integrate the site with a PayPal shopping cart

so that visitors can purchase the shirts through PayPal.

We'll also build a contact form that sends us an email whenever someone fills it out.

We'll use PHP to add this functionality

and to keep the design and product information consistent

across the site as the catalog grows.

As we go, we'll cover core programming concepts like variables and conditionals

and sophisticated techniques for building more dynamic websites

like form processing and template files.

We'll be making an online store, but you can build all sorts of web sites

and web applications with PHP, like social networks, forums, blogs, and more.

Ready to get started?

Let's open up our text editors and take a look at a very simple example

of what PHP code looks like.

First, we'll type an opening angled bracket, followed by a question mark

and the letters P-H-P with no spaces in between them.

Then we'll type a space and the word "echo"

followed by another space.

Next, a quotation mark, the name of our website "Shirts for Mike"

followed by another quotation mark, a semicolon, a space,

another question mark and a closed angled bracket.

Now I'd like you to take a turn typing this line out.

Make sure you type it exactly as I have done here.

When you're done, we'll go over each part.