what is php

[themuffin]

I have a site that has .php pages such as index.php it also has some .html pages...like contact.html..
what is the difference and what is better? they all use a dreamweaver template
thank you

[ronverdonk]

PHP: which stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" is a widely-used Open Source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. Its syntax draws upon C, Java, and Perl, and is easy to learn. The main goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated webpages quickly, but you can do much more with PHP.
It is a server-side language, meaning that it executes on a server and apsses its results, mainly HTML, to the clientg, i.e. the user pc.

HTML: Webpages are written in HTML - a simple scripting language.
HTML is short for HyperText Markup Language.
Hypertext is simply a piece of text that works as a link.
Markup Language is a way of writing layout information within documents.

Basically an HTML document is a plain text file that contains text and nothing else.

When a browser opens an HTML file, the browser will look for HTML codes <tags> in the text and use them to change the layout, insert images, or create links to other pages.

Since HTML documents are just text files they can be written in even the simplest text editor.

HTML is a client-side script language. That means that is executes in nthe browser of the user's pc.

It is difficult to speak of better. You cannot simply compare functions, As stated above, html executes on the user's pc (in the browser) and php runs on a server and prepares the (html) data that is send to the user's pc in html format.

If you need to know more follow some basic tutorials. They can be found at many places on the web, but I advise to start with W3Schools Online Web tutorials

Ronald :cool: