h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

is there a quick way to find out if one's isp server has PHP avalabe?

Put the following in a blank text file:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

and put it on your server somewhere as phpinfo.php ... then try and get the url with your browser. If you see a load of settings that describe your PHP environment, you have it installed. If you just see what you typed, you don't (unless it's installed as a CGI module, but that's way beyond the scope of this entry anyway).

Make sure you delete this file from your server after looking at it, as it's a goldmine for system crackers!

~

I will give it a try

Glad to be of service!

Have not had the chance to try my isp yet. I do hope my server has it avalable, PHP looks interresting, usefull and someting to learn.

PHP is very interesting, but it is also a processor hog, as well as being "another thing to set up", and having potential security risks if file permissions are not set up properly. Most paid-for web hosts provide PHP hosting, but it is quite likely that if you are just renting space from your ISP, or have a free account somewhere, they will not have set it up.

~

I love PHP. One of the best things, I think, is that all the processing is hidden; unlike javascript where you can see the code it in the page's source.

One thing I don't like is it's not, as I say (I don't know how anyone else would refer to it), activly dynamic; you can't have it sitting there changing the page, you have to refresh the page. However this is a minor complaint.

Yeah. That's the same for all server-side scripting. Once you've tried PHP to its extremes, try using a real (efficient & powerful) language in CGI mode. I switched from PHP to Python a while back, and I suspect one day I'll move onto perl, which is the ultimate in hacky programming. My website is still all in PHP, though, so I must've really liked it at one point...

~

I'll probably do that, but PHP does what I want at the moment