Introduction

PHP is a great language to develop web applications rapidly and economically.
Many of us know this. But what many of us were unaware of is that PHP can also
be run as a command line script like c, c++, java, etc. Questions may arise
why do we need to run PHP on the command line? After all, we just need to create
websites with PHP, HTML, Graphics and JavaScript.

Why PHP Command Line Scripting needed?

JavaScript can be one of the most useful additions to any web page. It comes bundled with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator and it allows us to perform field validations, mouse-overs images, open popup windows, and a slew of other things.

In this article I will show you how to:

- Display the browser name and version number - Change the text in the status bar of the browser - Use an input box to get text from the user - Use a message box to display text to the user - Change the title of the browser window

Fantastico is a program that comes with most hosting packages,
integrated with the popular online control panel- Cpanel to offer web
hosting useres the ability to install popular programs and scripts. The
installation of these programs and scripts are significantly
simplified, all with the ease of a click of a button. Web-hosting users
are able to install multiple instances of popular open source programs
for their web design needs. For users who intend to get their sites up
and running in minimal time, Fantastico is the perfect solution.

The very name CGI used to send chills up my spine. For years I put
it in the 'too-hard-basket'. But like most things in life, CGI is not
as scary as it seems. If you have a cgi directory on your website and
you know how to FTP files, chances are you can have a CGI script up and
running in less than 20 minutes.

As discussed earlier, PHP is an open-source, server-side scripting
language. What I didn't mention, on purpose, was the fact that it is also an
embedded CGI language. This certainly will raise some eyebrows! Now, PHP is an
embedded language in the sense that it is enclosed within tags and you can
easily switch between PHP and HTML without having to use large amounts of code
to output HTML. Common Gateway Interface (CGI) allows you to write computer
programs, which can generate HTML and can dynamically process data from Web

To install apache2 run that command:

sudo apt-get install apache2

I will discuss the steps that are required to
configure PHP to work with Apache and MySQL in Linux.

What is PHP?

PHP, which stands for "Hypertext Preprocessor", is a server-side,
HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. Much of its syntax is borrowed
from C, Java and Perl with some unique features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow Web
developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.