It sometimes
seems as though Microsoft is battling to persuade people
to use its proprietary technologies such as ASP .NET
and Web Forms in ignorance of the fact that the battle
is already lost, the war having been won long ago by
PHP.
Unlike Java which was announced with much ballyhoo and
fanfare a decade ago, PHP crept up, almost unnoticed
by the big companies, and quietly took over the web.
You’ll find it everywhere. It is used to run web-based
forums, collaborative documentation (Wikis), advertising
management systems, guest-books, hit counters, polls
and, above all, Blogs.
A couple of years ago, Blogs may have seemed like one
of the fringe interests on the web. Why, after all, would
anybody want to write their diary in public? And even
if they did so, would anyone else really want to read
it?
But Blogs have matured well beyond the ‘Dear Diary’ stage.
And while there still are some in which the authors detail
the minutiae of their daily lives ("10
o’clock:
brushed my teeth; 10:30 put the cat out. 10:35 brushed
the cat. 10:40 put my teeth out" etc.), there are
also many which have far greater ambitions. Some of the
best political writing, for example, is now found on
the web rather than in the newspapers (see Normblog for
just one fine example). Other Blogs devote their attentions
to all kinds of subjects ranging from computer programming
to soul music.
The essential feature of a Blog is that it is dynamically
updated. Traditional HTML pages stay just the way they
are until you change the entire page and upload the HTML
all over again. A Blog, on the other hand, lets you add
new content when ever you want to. You just enter some
text and it is automatically inserted into the Blog.
The PHP language has proven to be excellent for this
task. Bits of PHP code sitting inside a web page template
are interpreted - and ‘replaced’ by data
- just before the web page is shown on screen.
Blogs are one specialised example of a generic type
of software known as a Content Management System (CMS).
This month we take a first look at open
source CMS. We
explain what
you need to run a PHP-based CMS on a Windows-based
PC or on a Linux based web host; and how
to choose and
install a Blog system including step-by-step guidance
to installing the popular WordPress.
Whether you want to write a simple Blog or create a
complex, dynamically updated web site, this is the way
to do it. Have fun…!
Huw Collingbourne
(Editor)
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