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Developing A Website

The Basics of HTML, CSS and PHP

Creating - Building A Website -

Now let's get down to the main business of building a website or website development. You can use a website builder for this purpose but we recommend first getting a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. That will give you more control on your website development and you will be able to make fine changes. If you know the syntax very well then you can develop a website even with Notepad. And the good news is that the basics of HTML can be learnt in a matter of a few hours. So let's first understand what is HTML, CSS and PHP.

What is HTML? -

HTML is a short form for Hyper Text MarkUp Language and it was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in the 1990. It is the language that your browser such as firefox or chrome or IE understands. The browser first reads the html source of a webpage and then interpretes and displays it on your computer's screen. HTML is the language which is the mother tongue of your browsers. HTML has Markups means tags and they have a control over how the text between those tags is displayed on your screen. The tags have a starting code and and ending code. The ending code usually ends with a slash before the starting code. For example a paragraph has a html markup code as<⁢p>this is a paragraph.<⁢/p> anything between them will be displayed as a paragraph. A few more examples:-

To display a text in bold letters:

<⁢b> This text will be displayed bold<⁢/b>

To display a text in italics:

<⁢i>This is italics text<⁢/i>

To display the title of a web page use:

<⁢title>This is the title of the web page<⁢/title>

To denote the body section of a web page use:

<⁢body>This is the body of the web page<⁢/body>

Click here to get started with HTML and learn all the basic Syntax.


What is CSS? -

CSS is a short form for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS defines the style or formatting or you can say the look of a html document. CSS was first invented in 1997 with the intent of separating the styling or desgning of a web page from its content or structure. CSS are styling documents, generally stored in an external file with the extension .CSS CSS didn't gain popularity till the year 2000, but now it is the standard for all web designing and all the modern browsers now fully support CSS.

CSS provides a sophisticated way for controlling the look and formatting of web pages and saves a lot of hard work for web designers. The HTML defines the structure of a web page for example the paragraph tag <⁢P> <⁢/p> defines that this part is a paragraph. But CSS will define the look or styling of that paragraph. For example CSS will define what is the font or color or background color or font-size for that paragraph. CSS saves the duplication of work, for example if you created a class in CSS like myvisitsitelink, and defined the color, font, font-size, backgroung color or image, then you can use this class over your entire site, just by referencing this class in your HTML. And in the future if you decide to change the color or font-size, then you can just edit one line in this class and the change will be reflected over your entire site. Once you are familiar with CSS and start developing your sites, you will be amazed to see how easy CSS makes to develop your website and how easy it is to make site wide changes with just editing a few lines of code.

More About CSS and getting started with creating CSS documents



What is PHP? -

PHP is a recursive acronym for HyperText Preprocessor. Php is an open-source(means it is free) scripting language and is widely used for development of web pages. PHP was first invented back in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf which he then used for maintaining his personal home page. PHP at that time stood for 'Personal Home Page Tools'. PHP can be embedded into HTML with the tags <⁢?php and ⁢?> letting you get in and out of the PHP Mode.

PHP can be best used for when it comes to designing dynamic web pages. There can be 2 types of web pages, one static and other dynamic. Static pages only display information and do not interact with the user or do not change by the user's response. But dynamic web pages allow you to interact with the users of your site and provide the content on your web page according to that interaction. For exapmle you want your visitors to fill up an apllication form. Here you will require a programming language that will gather all the data entered by the visitor, store it in a database and then inform the visitor that their application has been created successfully. PHP let's you do just that.

The good news is that PHP is ver easy to learn and also free for use.

Click here to get started with Learning PHP