PHP is now the most popular module for the Apache server, currently running on about two million Web sites. This article discusses a short history, what to look for in a scripting engine, advantages and disadvantages of PHP, and more.
According to Symantec AntiVirus Research Center, "PHP.Pirus is the first virus written in PHP, a server-side scripting language used for dynamic Web page generation. The virus searches for .php and .htm files and inserts code to call itself. The virus executes only on servers with PHP interpreters. This virus cannot be contracted by simply visiting an infected Web page." The Web page offers technical description and how to remove the virus.
This article takes a quick look at PHP4's new features. Some of the issues discussed include: the difference between PHP3 and PHP4, Sessions, Output Buffering, COM support on Windows, Java support, and more.
PHP's lack of a standard database API makes switching databases difficult and costly once an application has been written. For example, if you write a program that uses a MySQL database on the back end, and you want to modify that program so that it uses a Sybase database, you'll most likely spend hours modifying the code. This article, along with sample codes, discusses possible solutions.
One of the most important ideas in creating scalable Web sites is to decompose our programs into more modular Web services. Our Web pages will no longer read a database, process the business logic and spew out HTML. Instead we will subdivide our pages into multiple sections, and render each section by calling different Web services. In this way we spread the CPU load across multiple servers. This article shows you how to implement these Web services using XML-RPC and PHP.
This article takes a brief look at PHP4/Zend technology. It discusses such issues as architecture and functionality, PHP3 vs PHP4, pros and cons of PHP, etc.
Being a good PHP hacker isn't just about writing single line solutions to complex problems. For example, web gurus know that speed ofcoding is much more important than speed of code. This article looks at techniques that can help you become a better PHP hacker. It assumes that you have a basic knowledge of PHP and databases.
PHP 4.0 makes its debut. The author puts PHP 4 through its paces on one of the busiest Web sites around--Linux Today--and what his benchmarking shows will amaze you: PHP 4.0 is an amazingly fast tool that can optimize any Web site.
In this article, Tobias Ratschiller (who runs http://phpwizard.net) explains what PHP is, what it can do, and where it stands compared to other programming and scripting languages.