Mix and Match

One of the most compelling things PHP has going for it is its
support for a variety of database management systems, including MySQL,
PostgreSQL, Oracle and Microsoft Access. By virtue of this support, PHP
developers can create sophisticated data-driven Web applications at a
fraction of the time and cost required by competing alternatives. And
nowhere is this more clear than in PHP’s longtime support of MySQL, the
very fast, very reliable and very feature-rich open-source RDBMS.

By using PHP and MySQL together, developers can benefit from huge
savings on the licensing costs of commercial alternatives, and also
leverage off the tremendous amount of thought PHP and MySQL developers
have put into making sure that the two packages work together
seamlessly and smoothly. And since both PHP and MySQL are open-source
projects, when you use the two of them together you know
you’re getting the most up-to-date technology available. And that’s
always a good thought to go to bed with.

OK. Enough of the marketing talk. Let’s get down to business.

In this issue of PHP 101, I’m going to show you how to use PHP to
extract data from a database, and use that data to dynamically build a
Web page. In order to try out the examples in this tutorial, you’ll
need a working MySQL installation, which you can obtain from the MySQL
Web site at http://www.mysql.com/.
If you have some knowledge of SQL
(Structured Query Language, the language used to interact with a
database server) you’ll find it helpful, but it’s not essential.

Building Blocks

In order to use MySQL and PHP together, your PHP build must include
support for MySQL. On UNIX, this is accomplished by adding the
--with-mysql option to the configure script
when building PHP on UNIX, and pointing PHP to the MySQL client
libraries. On Windows, the MySQL client libraries are built in to
PHP 4 and activated by default. In PHP 5, pre-built .dll files
are included with the Windows distribution. Read more about this at

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mysql.php.

Unix users should note that PHP 4 ships with a set of MySQL
client libraries, which are activated by default; however, PHP
5 no longer bundles these libraries due to licensing issues, so you
need to obtain, install and activate them yourself. They’re included
with the MySQL distribution, and are installed automatically when you
install MySQL. To activate the MySQL extension, ext/mysql,
add the --with-mysql option to PHP’s configure
script. For more information on this change, read
http://www.php.net/manual/en/faq.databases.php#faq.databases.mysql.php5.

And finally (as if all that wasn’t quite confusing enough) PHP 5 also
comes with a new MySQL extension, called ext/mysqli
(MySQL Improved). You can use this new extension to access the new
features in MySQL 4.1.2 or better, and to gain the benefits of improved
speed and security. To activate this extension on UNIX, add the
--with-mysqli option to PHP’s configure script,
and point PHP to the mysql_config program that comes with
MySQL 4.1 and above. For Windows users, a pre-built version of
ext/mysqli is included in the win32 PHP distribution. Read
more about this at http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mysqli.php.

To figure out which extension you need, use the following rule of thumb:

• If you need the new features in MySQL 4.1.2 or better, or if you’re
  using an older version of MySQL but still want to benefit from the
  speed/security improvements in the new extension, use ext/mysqli.
• If you don’t fall into either of the categories above, or don’t know what I’m
  talking about, use regular ext/mysql.

In case you were wondering, this tutorial covers both ext/mysql

and ext/mysqli, so you actually get two for the price of
one. Keep reading, and let me introduce you to MySQL.

Animal Magnetism

Every MySQL database is composed of one or more tables. These
tables, which structure data into rows and columns, are what lend
organization to the data.

Here’s an example of what a typical table looks like:

+----+-----------+----------+
| id | country   | animal   |
+----+-----------+----------+
|  1 | America   | eagle    |
|  2 | China     | dragon   |
|  3 | England   | lion     |
|  4 | India     | tiger    |
|  5 | Australia | kangaroo |
|  6 | Norway    | elk      |
+----+-----------+----------+

As you can see, a table divides data into rows, with a new entry (or

record) on every row. The data in each row is further broken
down into cells (or fields), each of which contains a value for
a particular attribute of the data. For example, if you consider the
record for the country “India”, you’ll see that the record is clearly
divided into separate fields for record number, country name and
national animal.

The rows within a table are not arranged in any particular order -
they can be sorted alphabetically, by number, by name, or by any
other criteria you choose to specify. It is therefore necessary to have
some method of identifying a specific record in a table. In the example
above, each record is identified by a unique number; this unique field
is referred to as the primary key for that table.

You use the Structured Query Language, SQL, to interact with the MySQL
server and tell it to create a table, mark a field as primary, insert
records, edit records, retrieve records… basically, anything that
involves manipulating the data or the database. To see how this works,
examine the following SQL, which creates the table above:


CREATE DATABASE testdb;

INSERT INTO `symbols` VALUES (1, 'America', 'eagle');

INSERT INTO `symbols` VALUES (2, 'China', 'dragon');

INSERT INTO `symbols` VALUES (3, 'England', 'lion');

INSERT INTO `symbols` VALUES (4, 'India', 'tiger');

INSERT INTO `symbols` VALUES (5, 'Australia', 'kangaroo');

INSERT INTO `symbols` VALUES (6, 'Norway', 'elk');




You can enter these commands either interactively or
non-interactively through the MySQL commandline client program,
which you run by navigating to the mysql/bin
directory from your shell or DOS box and typing – with no
; because this is a shell command – either
mysql, or mysql db_name if you want
to choose an existing database to work with. Read
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/mysql.html for more information
on how to use the MySQL commandline client, and the tutorial at

http://www.melonfire.com/community/columns/trog/article.php?id=39
to understand what each of the SQL commands above does. SQL is a
lot like spoken English, so it won’t take you very long to pick it
up. Just don’t try to turn those backticks into single quotation marks.

Once the data has been imported, run a quick SELECT
query to check that everything is working as it should be:

mysql> SELECT * FROM `symbols`;
+----+-----------+----------+
| id | country   | animal   |
+----+-----------+----------+
|  1 | America   | eagle    |
|  2 | China     | dragon   |
|  3 | England   | lion     |
|  4 | India     | tiger    |
|  5 | Australia | kangaroo |
|  6 | Norway    | elk      |
+----+-----------+----------+
6 rows in set (0.06 sec)

In English, the query above means “show me all the records from the
table named symbols“. If you saw the same output as above,
you’re good to go!

Hello Database!

Now, let’s use PHP to do exactly the same thing. You could use PHP
to set up the database from the start, but as ours already exists
we’ll simply fire a SELECT query at the database
‘testdb’, and display the results in an HTML page:


<html>

<head>

<basefont face="Arial">

</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>


Here’s what the result looks like:

As you can see, using PHP to get data from a database involves
several steps, each of which is actually a pre-defined PHP function.
Let’s dissect each step:

1. The first thing to do is specify some important information needed
   to establish a connection to the database server. This information
   includes the server name, the username and password required to gain
   access to it, and the name of the database to query. These values are
   all set up in regular PHP variables.

   
<?php

   $host = "localhost";
   
   $user = "test";
   
   $pass = "test";
   
   $db = "testdb";

   ?>



2. To begin communication with a MySQL database server, you need to
   open a connection to that server. All communication between PHP and
   the database server takes place through this connection.

   In order to initialize this connection, PHP offers the
   mysql_connect() function:

   
<?php

   $connection = mysql_connect($server, $user, $pass);

   ?>



   All the parameters in mysql_connect()are optional, but there
   are three you will generally need to use anywhere beyond your own machine:
   the database server name, username and password. If the database server
   and the Web server are running on the same physical machine, you can use
   localhost as the database server name this is in fact the
   default value supplied by PHP.

   mysql_connect() returns a “link identifier”, which is stored
   in the variable $connection. This identifier is used when
   communicating with the database.

3. Once you have a connection to the database, you must select
   a database for use with the mysql_select_db() function:

   
<?php

   mysql_select_db($db) or die ("Unable to select database!");

   ?>



   This function must be passed the name of the database to be used for
   all subsequent queries. An optional second argument here is the link
   identifier; if no identifier is specified, the last opened link is
   assumed. If you have two or more database connections open
   simultaneously, it’s a good idea to specify the link identifier as the
   second argument to mysql_select_db() – and indeed to all other
   mysql_* functions in the script, so that PHP doesn’t get confused about
   which connection to use where.

4. The next step is to create the query and execute it. This
   is accomplished with the mysql_query() function.

   
<?php

   $query = "SELECT * FROM symbols";

   $result = mysql_query($query) or die ("Error in query: $query. ".mysql_error());

   ?>



   This function also needs two parameters: the query string and the
   link identifier for the connection. Again, if no link identifier is
   specified, the last opened link is used. Depending on whether or not
   the query was successful, the function returns true or false; a failure
   can be caught via the ...or die() clause of the statement,
   and the mysql_error() function can be used to display the
   corresponding error message.

5. If mysql_query() is successful, the result set returned
   by the query is stored in the variable $result. This result set may
   contain one or more rows or columns of data, depending on your query. You can
   retrieve specific subsets of the result set with different PHP functions,
   including the one used here – the mysql_fetch_row() function -
   which fetches a single row of data as an array called $row. Fields
   in that row can then be accessed using standard PHP array notation.

   Each time you call mysql_fetch_row(), the next record in the result
   set is returned. This makes mysql_fetch_row() very suitable for
   use in a while() or for() loop.

   
<?php

   if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {
   
       while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {
   
           echo "<td>".$row[0]."</td>";

           echo "<td>".$row[1]."</td>";
   
           echo "<td>".$row[2]."</td>";

       }
   
   }

   ?>



   Notice that the call to mysql_fetch_row() is wrapped in a
   conditional test, which first checks to see if any rows were returned
   at all. This information is provided by the mysql_num_rows()
   function, which contains the number of rows returned by the query. Obviously,
   you can only use this function with queries that return data, like
   SELECT or SHOW.It is not appropriate for use with

   INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE or similar queries.

   There are several other alternatives to mysql_fetch_row(),
   which will be explained a little later.

6. Finally, since each result set returned after a query
   occupies memory, it’s a good idea to use the mysql_free_result()
   function to free up the used memory. After the result set is freed, if no
   further queries are to be run, you can close the connection to the MySQL
   server with mysql_close().

   
<?php

   mysql_free_result($result);
   
   mysql_close($connection);

   ?>



Different Strokes…

You can also use PHP’s mysql_fetch_row() and list()
functions to obtain a simple array of values, and then assign these values to
different variables – a variation of the technique in the previous section.
Take a look (only the while() loop changes):


<html>

<head>

<basefont face="Arial">

</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>


In this case, the list() function is used to assign different
elements of the result set to PHP variables, which are then used when
rendering the page.

You can use PHP’s mysql_fetch_assoc() function to represent each
row as an associative array of field-value pairs – a minor variation of the
technique used above:


<html>

<head>

<basefont face="Arial">

</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>


Notice that in this case, field values are accessed using the field
name instead of the index.

Of all the alternatives, however, the function I like the most is
the mysql_fetch_object() function, which returns each
row as an object (remember them from Part Seven?) with properties
corresponding to the field names:


<html>

<head>

<basefont face="Arial">

</head>

<body>

</body>

</html>


Here, each $row object is created with properties
corresponding to the field names in that row. Row values can
thus be accessed using standard object->property
notation.

If you’re the type that likes to have your cake and eat it too, you
will probably enjoy the mysql_fetch_array() function, which
returns both an associative array and a numerically-indexed array, a
combination of the mysql_fetch_row() and
mysql_fetch_assoc() functions. Read about it at
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-fetch-array.php.

…for Different Folks

If you’re using PHP 5, you can do the same thing using the new

ext/mysqli extension, which offers a number of new features. This
extension can be used in two ways: procedural (using functions), and
object-oriented (using class methods and properties). Consider the next
script, which uses ext/mysqli in a procedural manner:


<html>

<head>

<basefont face="Arial">

</head>

</body>

</html>




As you can see, this looks a lot like the code written for
ext/mysql. The only real difference – at least to the naked eye
- is the fact that function names now begin with mysqli_* instead of mysql_*.
Of course, there are a whole bunch of differences under the hood:
ext/mysqli is faster, more secure and more powerful than regular
ext/mysql, and also includes support for prepared statements,
bound result sets, multiple simultaneous queries, transactions and a whole
bunch of other cool stuff.

You can also use ext/mysqli in an object-oriented way,
where each task – connecting, querying, fetching – is actually a method
of the mysqli() object:


<html>

<head>

<basefont face="Arial">

?>



</body>

</html>




Here, the new keyword is used to instantiate an object of class
mysqli, and pass the object constructor connection information
(including the database name). The resulting object, stored in the variable

$mysqli, then exposes methods and properties to perform the
tasks of querying, fetching and processing rows, and handling errors.

If you look closely at the two scripts above, you’ll notice the numerous
similarities between the function and method names, and the structure of
the script. Of the two, though, the object-oriented method is recommended,
especially in light of the new object model in PHP 5.

A couple of other important differences to keep in mind:

• With ext/mysqli, you can include the database name in the
  arguments passed to the mysqli_connect() function or to the
  mysqli()constructor.
• When calling mysqli_query() or the mysqli
  object’s query() method, the link identifier is mandatory,
  not optional.

PHP 101 (part 8): Databases and Other Animals – Part 2

Copyright Melonfire, 2004 (http://www.melonfire.com).
All rights reserved.

1. Since Zend Framework is the opposite of the ideals behind the Micro PHP Manifesto, what are your thoughts on it?
2. Zend Framework v2 is close but not done – should a new project go with v1 or v2?
3. What is the current state of Zend Framework 2?

If you are using Zend Framework or thinking about using it, invest the 20-30 minutes it takes to listen to this interview to get hints as to where things are going.

Give it a listen and leave us a comment. The best way to have your voice heard is get involved in the conversation.

Traditional application development platforms, processes and best practices are being replaced or revitalized with new alternatives that echo what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg terms “The Hacker Way”: rapid, iterative development and continuous integration, building high quality services over time by prototyping, quickly releasing, and fine-tuning through iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once.

The article is an interesting read for developers but an important read for managers and Directors. If you don’t understand the concepts that Andi is talking about today, and point your team in their direction tomorrow, you may not have a next year. Grab it, stick it on your tablet or phone and ponder it over lunch or a Latte. Once you know how you feel about it, leave a comment.

phpUK – February 24 – 25, 2012

London – UK

PHP London are pleased to announce their 7th annual UK PHP conference, building on the success of previous events by expanding to a double-day event, to accommodate the continual growth of the PHP community and PHP development industry.
Note: Come early, they are hosting a special meeting of the phpUK User Group on Thursday evening, the 23rd.

ConFoo – February 29 – March 2, 2012

Montréal, Quebec – CA

PHP Québec, Montréal-Python, Montreal.rb, Montreal Jug, W3Qc, OWASP Montréal, Android Montreal, are proud to announce the third edition of the ConFoo Conference. From February 29th to March 2nd, 2012, international experts in Java, .Net, PHP, Python and Ruby will present solutions for developers and project managers the prestigious Hilton Bonaventure Hotel, located downtown Montréal.

Day Camp 4 Developers – March 3, 2012

Online

[Disclosure: I run Day Camp 4 Developers]
Whether you are a freelancer, a moonlighter or a dedicated member of a team, your business skills come into play every day. Day Camp 4 Developers #4: Business 101 will help you hone those skills. Our 6 speakers will present from their real-life experiences as they help you sharpen your existing skills as well and learn new ones. DC4D is an online conference. You participate on your computer or tablet from wherever you are.

Whisky Web – April 13 – 14, 2012

Edinburgh – SF

The inaugural Whisky Web conference kicks off in Edinburgh on the 13th and 14th of April 2012. A web conference created for the web community, by the web community; Whisky Web will have something to offer everyone who works with the web, be they a designer, a developer or something in between. This is an amazing opportunity to get your geek on in Scotland’s inspiring capital.

php|tek – May 22 – 25, 2012

Chicago, IL – US

[Disclosure: I host php|tek]
For the sixth year in a row, php|tek is coming to Chicago, come join us! Three days of great sessions, interesting talks and fun networking opportunities. This year’s theme is “PHP and Friends”. Join us as we gather a group of great speakers to show you the tools and technologies PHP developers need to understand in the coming year.

Dutch PHP Conference – June 7-9, 2012

Amsterdam – NL

We’re back! And we are glad to announce that we’ll be organising another edition of the Dutch PHP Conference, which will be held in Amsterdam from 7th to 9th June 2012. Thursday 7th will be the tutorial day and June 8th and 9th will be the main conference days. Ticket sales will start on February 15th.

Lone Star PHP – June 29 – 30, 2012

Dallas, TX – US

ZendCon

Of course, this fall is ZendCon so save room in your schedule for us.

GO!

With so many great conferences to choose from you should be able to find something to fit your schedule and budget. The best way to grow as a developer is to surround yourself with other developers; conferences are the best place to meet those new friends. Sign up for a conference and start learning something new.

One problem persists [with Zend Framework's Application.ini] although: the documentation. All the parameters for components like View, Session, Database etc. are documented either with the bootstrap resource, the component itself or both. Some of them are even completely undocumented and have to be extracted from the framework source code. Unfortunately there is no reference of all possibilities of the application.ini. To make my life – and that of other Zend Framework developers – a little bit easier, I created such a reference in form of an application.ini file with all possible options, grouped by resource and with some links and explanations.

The resulting application.ini can be found on gitup at the feibeck/application.ini. Be careful though, it is so complete and beautifully laid out, you may be tempted to print it out and frame it for office art rather than use it and start hacking it up.

As seen on phpdeveloper.org.

After working through that [Rob Allen's] tutorial, the next thing I wanted to do was figure out how to get the Doctrine 2 ORM up and running.

This article shows how to set up and use Doctrine 2 in Zend Framework 2, by extending Rob’s Getting Started tutorial to use Doctrine instead of Zend_Db.

Jame’s tutorial is long on the how but short on the why. If you are just looking for the steps to take, this is a great piece. If however, you are wondering why you take each step and what the ramifications are, well, you’ll be left a little lost.

Zend Server on OSX

This is one of the most requested features of Zend Server and now that it is available, people are talking about it.

Dr. Dobbs

Dr. Dobbs covered Zend Server on OSX in the tools section of their blog recently with an article titled “Zend Server 5.6 Now Supports Mac OS X“. In that article posted on January 22, 2012, they had this to say.

The 5.6 version release ships with a fully integrated PHP stack including the latest PHP runtime and the Zend Framework, plus monitoring and diagnostics. There are code acceleration and performance optimization technologies such as the Job Queue function, as well as full page caching and data caching to help developers improve application response times and reduce server load.

ServerWatch

Over at ServerWatch.com Vangie Beal wrote a nice post titled “New Zend Server Release Supports Mac OS X Platform Developers“. Here is what Beal had to say.

For the growing numbers of IT organizations using PHP and bringing Macs into the development environment, Zend said its 5.6 release offers important advantages for both app performance and quality, and productive collaboration on the web and in the cloud.

Both articles are short reads but interesting if you are considering introducing Zend Server on OSX into your development team.

phpcloud.com

The newest member of the Zend product lineup, phpcloud.com, got a little love as well. InfoWorld.com recently posted a nice review of it titled “First look: Zend’s PHP developer cloud“. Author Rick Grehan takes a nice, in-depth look at phpcloud.com and has this to say about it.

When you consider the cloud, you typically imagine a realm of deployed, production applications. Zend Developer Cloud (ZDC) adds a twist: ZDC creates a place in the cloud where PHP-based applications can be developed for the cloud. No more developing locally, then deploying into the cloud — ZDC pushes both into the ether.

This article is a bit longer than the other two but a great read none the less.

Ok, so you’re pretty comfortable with using the Zend Framework, specifically the use of Forms. Along with that, you have a good working knowledge of how to combine a host of standard validators such as CreditCard, EmailAddress, Db_RecordExists, and Hex, and standard filters such as Compress/Decompress, BaseName, Encrypt, and RealPath. But what do you do when a situation arises that’s outside the scope of the pre-packaged validators and filters?

Let’s say you want to guard against users uploading files that contain viruses, for example. You would have to write a custom validator that checks the uploads aren’t infected. Today I’ll show you how to do just that – how to write a new file validation filter for Zend Framework that uses ClamAV to ensure uploaded files are virus-free.

It’s not a beginner level tutorial but it is well written and a great explanation of how to built a custom validator.

Survey Highlights

Tech Investment and Developer Focus Areas for 2012

Key areas of technology investment are revealed by the types of projects that developers expect to tackle as well as their priorities for career and skills development in the new year.

Key project focus areas:

• 66 percent of developers will be engaged in mobile app development projects
• For each of these four key technology areas — APIs, cloud, social media integration, and big data/analytics — between 40-50 percent of developers said they will have projects underway in 2012

Career and skills development priorities:

• Next-generation UI development scored high both in the large enterprise and overall (75 percent)
• 67 percent of all developers surveyed are looking to hone their app development skills on mobile platforms, and 46 percent in cloud computing environments
• As one might expect, among corporate developers at companies over 100 employees, another priority is gaining expertise with Big Data/analytics (44 percent)

Cloud Opportunities on the Rise

• More than 60 percent intend to use some form of public cloud in their development projects. Inside the Zend Developer Pulse^™ Survey Report, you can find out which public clouds developers are working in now
• As far as skills are concerned, 46 percent of all developers surveyed are looking to hone their skills in cloud computing. This result is consistent with the high level of interest that Zend is seeing at phpcloud.com, where developers are actively building apps for the cloud, in the cloud, in the free Zend Developer Cloud sandbox.

State of Languages

The new norm among developers is use of multiple languages, and rising use of dynamic open source languages, and the Zend Developer Pulse^™ survey echoes this trend.

• Four languages, PHP, C, Java and Javascript dominated survey results, with a number of other languages trailing far behind
• Developers reported using 1-2 additional languages on a regular basis; as high as 33 percent of enterprise developers report using both PHP and Java
• Two-thirds of all developers surveyed spend more than 50 percent of their time with PHP, using PHP as their core language; this includes an uptake of PHP in the enterprise

Increasing Demand for PHP Skills

From an employment perspective, more than half of developers surveyed see increasing demand for PHP skills in 2011-12. Inside the report, you can find out how this aligns with the findings of leading online job search companies, what developers are saying about language use today, and what other skills they’re looking to add to their bag of tricks.

Just for Fun

It turns out that 86% of developers surveyed prefer to listen to music while coding, so Zend asked about their music preferences.  To get 2012 off to a good start, developers shared their New Year’s resolutions, also captured in the report.

Developers are invited to contribute suggestions and questions they’d like to see addressed in future Zend Developer Pulse^™ survey reports. It’s as easy as sending an email to developerpulse@zend.com.

When you log into phpcloud.com for the first time, you are presented with a screen that has a big blue button, “Start Now”. Clicking this button is the first step. WAIT! Before you click it, let’s cover a few things.

First, what you are about to create is a “Container”. Containers can contain multiple applications and all share a database. Containers can be cloned by taking a snapshot. In some cases, you will want to run a single application in a single container. Other times – as long as you are careful to avoid database table name collisions – it’s fine to run multiple applications inside a single container. If it’s easier, think of a container as a server instance. Whatever you would normally do on a single server, do that with your container.

You are going to have to name your container and the thing you need to know is that the container namespace is global. (Someone already has “test, I checked) As with everything, if you are just playing around, your container name doesn’t really matter since no one else will see it. However, if you are setting up your development environment for work, useful names are better than Loony Tunes Character names.

Once you understand what a container is and what you are going to call it, go ahead and click the big blue button. Fill out the form – don’t use password as the actual password – and click the “create Container” button. phpcloud.com will tell you if your password is weak, normal or strong but it won’t prevent you from using a weak password.

Since this is a fly-by, we’ll skip discussing how to setup an SMTP server but if your application is going to send mail using the mail() function in PHP, you will need to configure one at some point.

Now we play the waiting game. Fortunately for us, it usually takes about 30 seconds to create a new container. While you are waiting, go ahead and download your access key in the proper format. This is your only way to access the code and database in your new container. Because this is a cloud container and not a specific server, you can’t just ssh in and see your code. You can however, create ssh tunnels so you can use your favorite IDE or MySQL tool. There’s a good tunneling overview that will show you want you can and can’t do with an ssh tunnel. Of course you will also need your keys to deploy code either over sftp or git.

Containers are all well and good but they do nothing but contain things. To actually make something happen, we need to setup an application. As mentioned above in the discussion of containers, you can have as many applications in a container as you need. The only caveat is that they all share a common database.

When you created your container you automatically created the default application inside of your container. This default application is an empty PHP application ready for you to start pouring code into. If that is what you need, you can use the default application and not worry about adding applications. If your needs are different though, you can delete the default application and install a new one. phpcloud.com’s application installer lets you setup an empty PHP application, a Zend Framework (1 or 2) application, or one of five open source packages.

Once you have your application setup, you can setup git or sfpt access to start deploying code or you can create other applications inside your container.

That’s it, you are now up and running. If you installed WordPress, you can go to the admin page and log-in. If you created an empty application (Zend Framework or other) you can begin pouring code into it and making things work. There is a lot more that you can do with phpcloud.com; the point of this article was just to get you started.