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PHP Hosting

February 1st, 2007

Why Should I Use PHP?
The PHP programming language has a number of strengths and only a few weaknesses.

PHP was adapted from Perl and C. If you have any experience with these programming languages then picking up PHP should be fairly easy. If you understand Java, then should have no problem learning PHP version 5 quickly. Also, if you have experience using ActionScript from Flash then you should be able to learn PHP fairly rapidly.

If you have no experience in programming, PHP is a great way to start. A lot of components for PHP are available for free. PHP Nuke is a very popular portal software package and can be used to rapidly build a Web site using templates. PHP Nuke is a free application and includes all source code, so while you learn the language you can have a Web site in place. Most PHP Web Hosts include a ton of PHP add-ons that you can use to build a full Web site (such as forums, picture galleries, banner rotations, portal software, add password protections, etc) and most of these include full source code so you can tinker with them as you learn.

PHP is a very popular language so finding answers to your programming questions or finding tutorials on building various types of Web pages are available free on the Net.

PHP is a flexible and powerful language so your creative possibilities are only limited by your programming skill.

A Few Problems
PHP has had a number of criticisms. We will list some of the more common ones here. Don’t be discouraged by the following list, all programming languages have their own down sides, most of which can be solved by having a good PHP Web Host.

PHP does not allow you to detect and clean harmful cross-site scripting (an exploit in which a hacker can use your pages to output bogus data or even malware).

The PHP languages carries more than 3,000 functions (commands), most of which over lap each other and add complications as well as redundant code.
The php.ini file has many settings and sometimes one PHP Web site may work fine on one computer ends up not working at all on another computer.

Some PHP extensions (add-on commands and plugins) are not compatible with some Web Server software. This may lead to crashes.

If your PHP Web Host understands the limitations of PHP, they can help you solve the bulk of the problems listed above. If you cannot set the global php.ini file, your Web Host will have to change it or move your site to a server that is compatible with your Web site. The Web Host should also notify you of PHP extensions that are not compatible with their services.

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