For those of you who have either programmed in other language(s) or have read a programming book before, you’re aware of this INITIATION RITE.

For the benefit of those who have never written a program before, I’ll explain what this is:

A “Hello World” program is simply a program that displays a “Hello World” message to the user (or programmer) in the simplest way possible in the Language (i.e. programming language which in this case is PHP)

Since it’s practically the simplest program possible, it lets you take in the structure and general rules for the specific language without having to go into too many details.

Introduction

I hope you’ve installed an appropriate editor (see PHP Getting Started – Setting Up the Environment).

Using a very good editor is essential especially for newbies, because it reduces the stress of you having to watch your code for different situations that arise (e.g syntax highlighting, method highlighting e.t.c).

Now on to the real thing; to actually run PHP code, it needs to live in a particular folder on the server (Recall we installed WAMP Server from the Getting Started Tutorial). So you’ll have to follow the steps below to know where and how to use your installed local server:

1. Locate the install directory for your WAMP installation (for Windows usually C:\wamp — Lets call this WAMP_INSTALL_DIR); for Ubuntu users, this step is not necessary
   
2. Then locate the folder named www inside of it, so you’re finally in the directoryWAMP_INSTALL_DIR\www; for Ubuntu users just browse nautilus to /var/www on Ubuntu.
3. This is your web root, It’s called web root because this is where you’ll place all files (i.e. html, css ,javascript, php e.t.c that will be viewable in the browser).

PLEASE NOTE: I’ll assume you are a Windows user for all tutorials following this.

Let’s Start

The next step is to start your editor, just double-click the icon for your IDE (Integrated development Environment), If you remember i suggested one of either:

• Netbeans
• Eclipse ; or
• Dreamweaver check the Getting Started tutorial for more information

Every editor has it’s own way but usually one common thing among all of them is the ability to create projects (a project is simply a new website) but we’ll start with something simple.

Create a new file in your web root (hope you still remember where that is? just kidding… ). Depending on your IDE, you’ll follow different paths although an easy way is to press Ctrl+N on your keyboard which opens a new file or a new file dialog (all you have to do is make sure you save it in your web root); feel free to give it any name e.g  hello-world.php

Make sure to add a .php at the end of the file name else the server won’t recognize it as a PHP file (more on this at a later time).

Writing our Code

The next step after all the above is to write the code into the file, simply type the following:

<?php

echo "Hello World";

?>

• Press Ctrl+S to save the contents (the code) of the file.
• Open you browser
• Make sure that WAMP Server is running on your computer, you can look at your system tray to confirm or you can simply double-click the wamp icon on your desktop to start it
• Browse to http://localhost/hello-world.php or http://127.0.0.1/hello-world.php

Code Explanation

Explanations will be made on a line-by-line basis:

1. We have <?php ; if you have had knowledge of html, its called a tag (more precisely an opening tag); it denotes the beginning of a block, in our case it denotes the beginning of a PHP code  block.
2. Next is the line echo “Hello World”; This line contains something in programming called a statement (more on this later),  All echo does is to print to the page any piece of text enclosed in quotes (“) immediately after it. (Hint: try changing the Hello World to something else). Please also note that the statement ends in a semicolon (;) every statement in PHP must end in this
3. Finally we have ?>; its another tag. It’s actually the closing tag (Rule 1: every opening tag must have a closing tag). So one can place any amount of code in between the PHP open and close tag

There you have it. A running albeit simplistic PHP program.

As you can see, with this very simple example, we’ve talked about the

• PHP tag,
• a function called echo, and
• the importance of semicolons

See you in the next tutorial (don’t forget to pick up a good PHP book and go through it and feel free to ask questions on whatever you read in the forum. Start new threads and generally have fun).

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Okay maybe you haven’t…but have you ever used Facebook? (Stupid question…i Know!)

Then you’ve seen PHP in action; YES, Facebook runs PHP in it’s back-end (i.e. server-side).

Please note, this series of tutorial is not supposed to take the place of a Book, it will only set you on the path so I’ll start you off, then followed by series of topics touching different areas of the language. Enjoy the ride…

Introduction

PHP can be said to be the only server-side scripting language that is powerful, fun and easy to learn as well as work with. According to current surveys, PHP currently powers as much as 16,000,000 (16 million) websites; simply because it’s scalable, powerful, easy and (let’s not forget) FREE.

In the tutorials following this one, i Intend to teach you the PHP language as well as show you how easy and smooth it can be to actually develop Web applications in PHP (so long as you follow certain programming principles).

Let’s ride…

Setting Up The Environment

Yes, before we start anything; we definitely need to make sure certain software are installed to help us run our beautiful PHP code. We’ll be working with PHP 5, so if you don’t have PHP 5 installed on your computer then follow the instructions below to get it installed:

Rather than install the components of the system (i.e. Apache, MySQL and PHP) one at a time, some packages are available on the web that incorporate all three components for a one-time setup. I’ll thus be dividing this section into two parts:

• The first for installation on Windows
• The second for installation on (Ubuntu) Linux

Windows

For Windows users, there are a couple of options in this regard that pack all three components together; they are:

• WAMP
• EasyPHP
• XAMPP

I use WAMP, so i’ll recommend that we you install it on your target machine. To do so, follow the instructions below:

• Visit the WAMP website and download a copy of WAMP 2.x (usually a .exe file)
• Double-click the downloaded WAMP 2.x.exe file to run the installation (It would usually install in your C:\wamp)
• Follow the installation prompt till you click the Finish button on the final screen
• Look at your system tray click on the WAMP icon as shown in the image, click on it (not Right-Click) then click on the “Put Online” option from the menu (feel free to familiarize yourself with this menu because you’ll need it)

(Ubuntu) Linux

For Ubuntu users, you’ll have the option of either installing each component independently (installing then via Aptitude from your Terminal) or installing a package containing all three components.
For Option two (2), you’ll find a very good set of instructions here .

The package name is LAMP.

Finishing Touches (Installation)

If you did the above correctly, then PHP has been installed on your machine. To actually test your installation visit this URL in your browser http://localhost

(NOTE: if that doesn’t work on your computer, try the URL like this http://127.0.0.1); If that still doesn’t work, it probably means either of two things:

1. You haven’t finished your installation or you didn’t perform the installation correctly (try to re-install it)
2. Apache is not running (This could be because you have another software using your Post 80 e.g Skype, IIS – This problem should not exist Ubuntu users). We first need to find out what application is blocking port 80. To do so, do these:
   • Click on your WAMP icon in your System tray
   • Go up the list and place your mouse pointer over  Apache
   • It should bring up a sub-list, go down that sub-list and hover over Service
   • This should bring up another sub-list, go down that list and click on the Test Port 80 option (it should have a green Play button in front of it)
   • It should open up a DOS window and show you the application taking hold of your Port 80, if it’s anything other than Apache 2.x.xx … (where x and . are place holders i.e. it could be anything on your own computer); then you have to exit that software, then click on the WAMP tray icon then click on Restart All Services.
   • If it’s IIS, the process is a little different, you’d have to go to your (Administrative tools) system services in Control Panel and manually disable IIS. Then simply restart the service as above.

Next is setting up our IDE (Integrated Development Environment)

(Ubuntu) Linux

For the average Ubuntu user, you could simply stick to gedit; but if you really want to enjoy programming in PHP, then i’d recommend you install either:

• Eclipse (also install the PDT PHP plugin) or;
• Netbeans (for PHP)

You can install either of them via  the Ubuntu Software Center (or Terminal)

Windows

First, I always discourage the use of Notepad, it’s a very terrible Editor.

The least i’ll expect anyone to use is Notepad++; but if you really want to enoy coding in PHP with very good syntax highlighting, you can try any of the following:

• Eclipse (also install the PDT plugin)
• Netbeans (for PHP)
• Adobe Dreamweaver (or Macromedia Dreamweaver

Which ever one you choose, the most important thing is that you’re comfortable while writing your code.

Conclusions

With your Environment and IDE set up correctly, we’re ready to make our First Steps in your PHP journey…

Welcome

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