I've dabbled with some ASP.NET...I'm not sure if it was VB of JScript though.
PHP totally rocks and there are tons of built-in functions and tons of support from the community. Best of all PHP has with little doubt the best documentation available at
php.net where you can simply type in a command such as
explode after php.net as so:
http://php.net/explode.
What's also great about PHP is you're not stuck on a WAMP server. Granted I find XP to be for now the only viable web production environment (as far as not having learning be a complete wall versus only a slow-down factor, at least for now) though Wine has really been tempting me to move over to Ubuntu...so a whole lot of free as in not spending money...did I mention the awesome php.net website? LAMP servers are always cheaper though they're also better.
You may end up developing locally on a WAMP server and hosting live on a LAMP server like I currently do. The only difference in the environments basically (from my own experience) barrels down to file system paths and for me it's been pretty rare when I encounter those situations.
Some basic code differences...
Client Output
Includes
Code: Select all
<!--#include virtual="footer.html"-->
Notice the less verbose syntax? Less syntax to write and more stuff gets done!
Here is an example of connecting to a database with PHP. I've added the bit I use that makes the same build work both on my local computer (WAMP server) and my live server (LAMP) minus exact details (user/pass).
Code: Select all
<?php
if ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']=="www.example.com")
{
$truedbuser = "example_user";
$truedbpass = "example_pass";
}
else
{
$truedbuser = "localhost_user";
$truedbpass = "localhost_pass";
}
$db = mysql_connect("localhost", $truedbuser, $truedbpass);
if ($db) {echo '<div>connected to database!</div>';}
else {echo '<div>could not connect to database!</div>';}
$db_selected = mysql_select_db("database_name", $db);
if ($d_selectedb) {echo '<div>found database!</div>';}
else {echo '<div>could not find to database!</div>';}
?>
PHP is simply awesome and it's pretty much the best supported serverside scripting language you could choose to learn considering it's the most widely used.
