Viewing Thread:
"Should I be using php?"

I mastered HTML and CSS (kinda), but I never really got into php despite owning a few books.

When I create a site I can change pretty much anything with CSS, but if I want to change big chunks of the site layout I have to alter every single page which is not good. So my question is, should I have studied php all those years ago? Is there anything out there that can do all this form me for free so I dont have to change 100s of webpages individually? Or maybe there's a new programming language in development thats better than ASP and PHP, in which case should I start learning now?

Its okay, this wont affect my current site, but I need to know for future projects. Freeola is done in php right? it cant be that difficult. Could I be able to master it within a week?

Thanks for your help guys, I appreciate it.

If its that simple why couldnt I find it when I was googling for an hour :/

Thank you very much Garin. Although I just realised, is this set to my server clock or my computer clock? My server is in California, but I want it set to GMT. Is that possible do you know?

Server time, which may or may not report GMT.

You can try something like..

<?php putenv('TZ=Europe/London');echo date('l F j, Y');?>

Although whether that works will depend on php security settings. PHP 5 has built in functions for setting the timezone but dunno if you're running 5 or not.

It works, thanks Garin ^^

so can you mix and match html and php ? if we have a page online thats a .htm file an I add the include ph thing? and so long as the include page has the .php extension it will show am i correct? eg I make a web page insert a table and in that table addd the line include menu.php for example - then to change a menu over the site all I do is change menu.php? is that how it works?


Digi

Update - just did a wee test and if I saved a page as .htm it didnt work, but saved both pages with .php ext ad yeah ot worked so i would need to rename all our pages with .php right?

Digi

Yep - for Freeola sites, if the page contains PHP is needs to be called .php

Same for an SSI - the page needs to be .shtml





Search Freeola Chat

Ok got it - ;? :)

Digi

Hi Digi,

I've just read through this thread and thought I'd chip in for what it's worth:

Apparently there is a school of thought which say you should only use pure php by echoing your HTML statements throughout your php page code but I've found there is little you can't achieve with a php statement strategically lashed in amongst your HTML - although it's really worth commenting your code well to avoid getting lost (use single quote within the php tags like ). My web site is a huge mish mash of HTML and PHP (with a MySQL db) so I'm getting to be a dab hand at coming up with 'creative' php solutions to my page problems. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post web site urls here so please ask if you would like to see what I've done with a php site.

Anyway back the issue of includes, through trial an error I've found it's usually best to use becaue if you use on several pages and then include more than one of those pages on a single page you will get an error message.

I hope that makes sense.

hiya, im new to all this web design and have been teaching myself by messing around with a site and learning from my mistakes. mainly i find or see something on another website that i would like to do on my site, then search around for ll the help and scripts etc i can, ive got a good understanding of html but ive found that php and asp is the coding to be using, at the moment im trying to get my head around building the script, applications & forms etc but i think i'm in to deep cos i can't get anything to work, to be honest i'm finding it hard, you need this form that script and this snippet, i would love to crack this php and asp, but after trying different things out over the past few weeks i'm starting to wonder if freeola even support asp???? do you know??? by now you may be thinking i have not got a clue wot i'm talking about and your right cos all i know is wot ive worked out for myself and the only php application i successfully have running is a newsletter submission script, since ive been workin with asp ive been amazed at how powerful it could be if that makes sence, so yeh asp is the way to go and when you have cracked it can you let me kno how. many thx.

do any of you guys use dreamweaver, i'm using dreamweaver cs3 which i thought would make all this php and asp simple or at least simpler, but it just seems to be simple yet more confussing!

can anyone tell me if dreamweaver is helpin me make things simple or should i be using some other process.

I would avoid programs like Dreamweaver that automatically generate code for you.
It is confusing and the code is not very good to learn from (often it's very messy and includes a lot of stuff you don't need).
The best way to learn PHP or ASP is to write the code yourself using a good text editor like Notepad++ or PSPad. Dig around on Google, there are loads of PHP tutorials sites.

Regarding ASP, Freeola do not support this as it is a scripting language that runs on Microsofts web server software. We run Unix on our servers, which do not support ASP.