server questions for stupid people (ie me)

[dvtimes]

I see firms who offer servers also offer things such as MySQL, CGI scripts, Dedication CGI bin, Perl, PHP, SSI, Cron Jobs and so on.

What do these do and what cool things can you do with them?

[redwhiteandblue]

CGI means Common Gateway Interface and just describes the way that script connect with the server. It means you can run scripts on the server basically.

Perl used to be the language that server scripts were written in but it's not used so much now.
PHP is one of the most common server side scripting languages now, as it's free and easy to learn.
MySQL is the database language that usually is used in conjunction with PHP.
SSI mean server side includes, which are files that you can include in your HTML instead of repeating everything for each page.
Cronjobs are scheduled actions performed by the server, such as to run a script to update things at regular intervals.

HTH.

[dvtimes]

Where is the best place to learn about PHP then?

[viki]

If you're seriously interested in learning PHP (or any other programming language for that matter), I've found the best books are the Visual QuickStart Guides.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Second-Visual-QuickStart-Guide/dp/0321245652

[REBEL]

http://www.goodphptutorials.com/category/basic-and-beginner

The quickest and easiest thing to learn about PHP is includes. I posted a tutorial on NP the other week on how to use includes.

Basically it's a way to have repeating elements on the site pulled from just one page. IE: The header, the footer, the navigation menu, anything and everything that you would use on multiple pages of the site can be put on it's own page and be "included" in any and all pages using it with a simple include file statement.

Then if there was anything to change (add a link, remove a link, etc) you would just change it the once on the file that contained it, and every page that included the file would be updated.

There are lots of other uses of course. Redirects, dynamic sites using php and a mysql database, and other content management frills. But you have to start somewhere and I believe mastering includes is the best first step into the php world.

[dvtimes]

ta

i will take a look

[wankmaster]

PHP is good.

I looked at Perl but it all looked like Greek to me, so I never bothered with it.