website introduction

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How-to-build-websites.com is designed for total beginners … and for people who use programs like Dreamweaver, FrontPage, and other wysiwyg programs (wysiwyg stands for: “What You See Is What You Get”) … and now want to learn what’s going on ‘behind the scenes’.

What is the web?

In a nutshell, the web is a whole bunch of interconnected computers talking to one another. The computers (on the web) are typically connected by phone lines, digital satellite signals, cables, and other types of data-transfer mechanisms. A ‘data-transfer mechanism’ is a nerd’s way of saying: a way to move information from point A to point B to point C and so on.
The computers that make up the web can be connected all the time (24/7), or they can be connected only periodically. The computers that are connected all the time are typically called a ‘server’. Servers are computers just like the one you’re using now to read this article, with one major difference, they have a special software installed called ‘server’ software.

What is the function of server software / programs?

Server software is created to ‘serve’ web pages and web sites. Basically, the server computer has a bunch of web sites loaded on it and it just waits for people (via web browsers) to request or ask for a particular page. When the browser requests a page the server sends it out.

How does the web surfer find a web site?

The short answer is: by typing in the URL, or in other words, the web site address. So for example, if you wanted to find the web site www.w3school.com, you would type in the address into your web browser’s address bar or maybe use your ‘favorites’ or ‘bookmarks’ link to Killersites.
There are other ways to find web sites (like search engines,) but behind the scenes web sites are all being found by going to the web site’s official address. That brings us our last nerd detail: how does a website get an official address so that the rest of the web can find it?

Registering your domain name

If you ever wondered what the heck registering a domain was all about … you probably figured it out by now! But just in case – registering a domain name gets you an official address for your web site on the World Wide Web. With this ‘official’ address, the rest of the web can find you.
Like your home address is unique in the real world, there also can’t be any duplicate addresses on the Internet, otherwise no one would know where to go! In other words, domain names are unique addresses on the web.

Why does registering a domain name cost money?

If you want to have your own unique address on the web, your own domain name, it will cost a few bucks for each year you want to ‘own’ the name. The cost of registering a domain name ranges from less than $10 USD to about $30 USD per year. You can register a domain from 1 to 10 years.
The reason for the cost is that the central ‘address book’ of all the world’s domain names needs to be updated – somebody’s got to pay for that! You may have noticed that I just snuck in a little extra piece of information: the giant ‘web address book’ of domains.
That leads us to our last bit of nerd information: when you type in a website’s domain name or click on a link that takes you to that domain name, your browser starts asking servers where that particular domain name is sitting (on the web) and the servers are then able to tell the browser where to go by referring to the giant address book I mentioned above.

PHP INTRODUCTION

PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor ) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. PHP stands for P HP: H ypertext P reprocessor PHP is a server-side scripting language, like ASP PHP scripts are executed on the server PHP supports many databases (MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, Generic ODBC, etc.) PHP is an open source software PHP is free to download and use Why PHP? PHP runs on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.) PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.) PHP is FREE to download from the official PHP resource: www.php.net PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side What can PHP do? Anything. PHP is mainly focused on server-side scripting, so you can...

Data Encryption

Data encryption is the process of scrambling stored or transmitted information so that it is unintelligible until it is unscrambled by the intended recipient. The intended recipient can then decode (or decrypt) the information. PHP offers multiple means to make this happen. However, none of these solutions are very effective without the applications running on secure servers and connections. The following are a list of the more common encryption functions in PHP: • md5() - MD5 is a third-party hash algorithm that PHP can use to create a digital fingerprint of a piece of data. It is next to impossible to (efficiently) recover the original text when a piece of data has been encrypted with the md5 hash algorithm. It is also vastly unlikely that any different text string will create an identical hash - a 'hash collision'. These properties make hashes ideally suited for storing an application's passwords because although an attacker may compromise a part of the system...

Delimiting PHP Code

PHP was originally designed to be used in conjunction with a web server, and in the case of the LAMP architecture, the Apache Web Server. PHP applications are designed embedding PHP scripts within a web page along with its HTML. Unlike standard HTML pages which are sent directly from the web server to the end user, PHP files are first interpreted by the PHP application which then converts the PHP script into another form for display. This process eliminates the end user from being able to see the original PHP script that was embedded in the HTML and provides true interaction in HTML files. This process is similar to proprietary applications such as ASP and Coldfusion; however, PHP is Open Source and cross- platform. PHP Tags PHP scripts are distinguished from the HTML scripts by using delimiting characters ...

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