Styles

Webdesign was initially limited as to what could be accomplished due to the original specifications, eg HTTP, HTML, CGI etc. Web pages tend to be 'static' pages, known as flat files - they are hand coded HTML and will remain the same until recoded or updated by a webdesigner at the usual cost. The result is that the website quickly dates.

A site consisting solely of flat files or static pages cannot host a guest book, include a section for users to ask for further information, have an easily updated news or events page or any of the more useful tools that are being put to use by many companies to reach new customers, or keep existing customers coming back.

This problem has been tackled many ways by companies including Microsoft with Active Server Pages, Macromedia's Cold Fusion, XML, Perl and a host of other applications and programing languages. Most are not free, in fact once specialized hosting, coding and licensing fees are taken into account the "dynamic" or interactive site is out of range of many companies, or simply not a cost-effective venture for others.

The 'Open Source' movement is breaking the hold of the large companies however. Riding on the back of Linux, the free operating system, together with the worlds most popular, reliable, secure, free webserver, Apache, an alternative to the propriety software exists. Php (Personal Homepage Programming AKA Hypertext Preprocessor), together with the MySQL database software is fast, secure and rapidly becoming the most popular match for dynamic webdesign. Php/MySQL is the choice of many leading companies and organisations including Yahoo!, the U.S. Census Bureau, NASA, Silicon Graphics. Php is currently used on 23,299,550 wesites (December 2001).

A short list of what can be done with php/mysql.

· Site search
· News page
· Comments/feedback/guest book
· Email forms
· Mailing lists
· User tracking
· Counters
· Orders/Bookings
· eCommerce sites - online sales
· Add links
· Discussion forums
· FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
· Logging in/Admin support (Secure Authentication)
· Content Management Systems
· Database connectivity with around 16 Db's
· Banner ad rotators
· Online auctions
· Audio manipulation
· Calendars
· Online Chat
· Polls and Voting
· Postcards
· Quote displays
· Online quizzes
· etc etc etc

Within reason, just about anything is possible with php/mysql. If you can think of it, it can be built.