There are many great reasons to learn PHP. You can reduce manual updates to webpages, get user input, and connect to a database of products or other information. But some web designers are intimidated by the theory and jargon. PHP for Web Designers is different.

Author David Powers provides a gentle introduction to PHP, through a series of simple exercises that help you develop fully functional dynamic webpages—all powered by PHP. Learn how to reduce website maintenance by moving common page elements to external server-side include files, change content automatically depending on the date or time, display alternate text, gather user input from a form, and link to a database to display product information. The final chapter is dedicated to understanding error messages and fixing their root causes.

Topics include:

• How to use PHP in a webpage
• Storing and displaying text and numbers in variables
• Using functions
• Adding comments to your PHP scripts
• Moving common page elements to include files
• Displaying different content on a page
• Working with multiple values in arrays and loops
• Getting form input sent by the POST method
• Using PHP sessions to preserve data
• Storing data in session variables
• Connecting to and querying a database
• Handling errors