Archive for April, 2008

Creating an Online Message Board (part 2)

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In creating an online message board, you can use PHP/MySQL programming in writing the program logic to create table topics, in defining top details, and to determine the set up for topic replies. So you better familiarize yourself first with PHP/MySQL programming. There is a website such as webmonkey.com that provides help by their step by step tutorials on detailed processes such as creating message board. In the webmonkey.com, you will just copy and paste the code listed to the website you prefer. With a little guidance, creating a board message is actually very simple and there are even free message boards that are ready-made although you may find the advertisements less attractive.

Creating an Online Message Board (part 1)

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Decide first the features you want in your message board. It’s like choosing between a luxurious or economy model. You may also want to consider the time length of time you are willing to devote in building an online message board. But always remember that message boards involve a lot of constant maintenance and repairs. Check on the internet for the companies that provide services for message boards and then compare. Keep in mind that it is quite difficult and laborious to work on creating boards; you may want the service of companies that specialize on message boards. Proboards.com and boardhost.com are examples of companies that provide services in creating message boards.

Writing HTML Forms (part 2)

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To obtain information fro users, use the < input > tag, it is used with several form elements like checkboxes, radio buttons, reset and submit. Every time a user is about to enter information, the < tag > tag is used. Using the < form method =”POST” action=” “ > tag, you may submit the form to the server and such form will be processed by the script. CGI, PHP and Perl are the common server scripts. There are programs also that offer a wide range of form capabilities but need a higher level of programming ability such as Active Server Pages (ASP) and Cold Fusion which create advanced data driven forms.

Writing HTML Forms (part1)

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With HTML forms, web content developers allow user to enter and submit information. It also collect user’s input either by adding the information into a database or via email. To create the form’s layout in a word processing program, a usable form should already be designed in advance. It is important if you want to make your work easier to have a clearly designed form. With starting the form with < form > and ending the form with the < /form > tags, the content of the Html form for the form processing program is defined. MySQL, Perl, CGI and PHP are the most common form processing programs and they should be present on the web server to process the form data.

History of PHP

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Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 originally generated PHP as a wrapper around Perl to display his resume information and collect some data like how many hits it was making. In 1995 Leodorf combined his own Form Interpreter with “personal home page tools” to create PHP/FI. In 1997, two Israeli developers of the Technion, Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, rewrote the parser thus the basis of PHP3. PHP/FI 2 was officially released in November 1997 and public testing of PHP 3 began right away and the official launching was in June 1998. in 1999, the two Israelite started a new rewrite of PHP’s core thus producing the Zend Engine. And in May 2000, PHP 4 was released and the development continues with PHP 5.

PHP Uses

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Ranking behind Java, C, and Visual Basic, PHP is the fourth most popular computer programming language that is especially suited for web development. It mainly runs on a web server with PHP code as its input and generating web pages as output. PHP can be installed on web servers, operating systems and platforms. It can be used for command-line scripting and client-side GUI application, as well as with several relational database management systems. The PHP group provides the complete source code for users to build, customize and expand for their own purposes and the best part is, it is free of charge.