Introduction of Web and PHP & Mysql part 1

Introduction of Web and PHP & Mysql

In this series of articles we will look into basics of world wide web (commonly know as WWW) and then Php & Mysql. We will work on real world examples and APIs. So let us start.

Before diving into world of web development we need to know some basic definations

What is Internet?

Internet is know as a global “network of networks”.  All of our networks e.g network in school, college or university, network of our office or even our computer in home or mobile phone with internet access are connected to internet.

What is the World Wide Web?

WWW or World Wide Web was invented by Tim Berners Lee at CERN in 1991.  according to WikiPedia

WWW is defined as

“The World Wide Web (WWW, W3) is an information system of interlinked hypertext documents that are accessed via the Internet.”

In above definition we please consider the word hypertext documents.

Hypertext Documents

Hypertext documents are the documents written in HTML markup language and have hyper links to other documents

Hyper Links are the links that connects one hyper text document to other hyper text document or a part of same document. When we click on a link it takes  us to the other web page or part of page.

Web Page

A web page is a hypertext document in World Wide Web and is written or created using HTML or Hyper Text Markup Language. WWW is collection of web pages and other resources like images, audio and videos etc.

HTTP – Hyper Text Transfer Protocol

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the foundation of data communication / transfer for the WWW. When a client requests a web page from server computer HTTP protocol is used to transfer web pages and other media to client’s computer.

Web Browser

A web browser is a software program that locate, retrieve  and  view web pages.  Most popular browsers are Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera.

Client Server Architecture

World Wide Web or Web is based on Client Server Architecture.  It means that a user in his home will open web browser in his computer and will enter the address like  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page . Now user’s browser will try to connect with the Wikipedia computer that will act as Server. User’s computer will act as client and Wikipedia will be Server as depicted in the picture below

 

Static Vs Dynamic Websites

If web page is only developed using HTML  tags or markups then it will be a static page but when a webpage is connected a database and some scripting language is used and content on the  is created on run time it will be a dynamic page.

A static page is like a brochure or a flyer. It will not change once created. but a dynamic page is  like a page that is created on run time and shows content based on user and his preferences like while visiting Facebook  each user sees his own  posts and activities of his own friends.

Server Computers

Server computers are powerful computers that host all the web pages and upon request froma user (client) servers them.

Server computer will have Web server software like Apache or IIS with Asp.NET or PHP as scripting languages and SQL Server or MySQL as Database Management System.

Tools and Skills for web developments

Today Web development is very complex topic. But for simplicity we will consider following basic technologies required for web development.

Client Side technologies:

• HTML / HTML5  – For creating basic web pages
• CSS/CSS3             –  For presentation of web pages.
• JavaScript            – Client  side scripting language
• There are other JS libraries like Jquery, Angular Js, Ember JS etc

Web Servers

For accepting requests from client computers and serving web pages to them is done by Web Server software like

• Apache
• IIS
• Nginx

Server Side Technologies

For  a dynamic web site we  need server side technologies that includes scripting languages and databases. some of the popular languages and DBMS used  are

• Apache, IIS  Nginx are popular web servers
• PHP
• ASP.NET
• Python
• Ruby on Rails
• JSP and many more
• MYSQL
• SQL Server
• Oracle

Why PHP and MySql?

PHP is most popular language used for web development.

• PHP can work with most popular web servers like IIS, Apache etc
• PHP can work with most popular DBMS like MySql, Sql Server, Oracle etc
• PHP can work on any operating system like Linux, Windows and Mac O.S
• PHP is very easy to learn and its resources are very easily available
• PHP is Open Source  and it is most commonly used with Linux, Apache  and MySQL. These all are Open source technologies.
• Yahoo, Wikipedia, WordPress and Facebook also use PHP server side language.

In next part we will start PHP basics. Please stay tuned and leave your valuable feedback.