C H A P T E R 1 An Introduction to PHP The past five years have been fantastic in terms of the explosive growth of theInternet and the new ways in which people are able to communicate with oneanother. Spearheading this phenomenon has been the World Wide Web (WWW),with thousands of new sites being launched daily and consumers being consis-tently offered numerous outstanding services via this new communicationsmedium. With this exploding market has come a great need for new technologiesand developers to learn these technologies. Chances are that if you are readingthis paragraph, you are one of these Web developers or are soon to become one.Regardless of your profession, you’ve picked this book up because you’ve heard ofthe great new technology called PHP. This chapter introduces the PHP language, discusses its history and capabili- ties, and provides the basic information you need to begin developing PHP-enabled sites. Several examples are provided throughout, hopefully serving toexcite you about what PHP can offer you and your organization. You will learnhow to install and configure the PHP software on both Linux/UNIX and Windowsmachines, and you will learn how to embed PHP in HTML. At the conclusion ofthe chapter, you will be ready to begin delving into the many important aspects ofthe PHP language. So light the fire, turn on your favorite jazz album, and curl upon the lazyboy; you are about to learn what will be one of the most exciting addi-tions to your resume: PHP programming.