Help me with php. Im new!!

[-dj-]

What would the benefits be for downloading php to my mac system? What would I use it for?

 

One more question, Anybody know a good IDE for mac? A free one if possible.

 

Thank you in advance

[phpSensei]

http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/why_php.html

 

PHP can be explained in so many words.

 

Resources

www.php.net - PHP.net, the central PHP site.

www.zend.com - Zend, home of the PHP parsing engine. Plus many interesting tutorials and articles.

www.phpbuilder.com - PHPBuilder, a PHP resource, with articles and tutorials.

http://px.sklar.com/ - the PHP code exchange containing snippets of PHP code.

 

and ofcourse

www.phpfreaks.com

 

 

PHP will run on (almost) any platform. Using the same code base, PHP can be compiled and built on about 25 platforms, including most UNIXs, Windows(95/98/NT/2000) and Macs. As this uses the same code base, all scripts will run identically, whatever the platform. 
PHP is similar to C. So anyone who has experience with a C-style language will soon understand PHP. In C-style languages we can also include Javascript and Java. In fact, much of PHP's functionality is provided by wrappers around the underlying system calls (such as fread() and strlen()) so C programmers will immediately feel at home. 
PHP is extendible. PHP consists of the core parsing engine (written by Zend), a set of core code modules and then a set of code extensions. This allows programmers two ways of extending PHP to do some special processing, either by writing an extension module and compiling it into the executable, or by creating an executable that can be loaded using PHP's dynamic loading mechanism. 
Lots of HTTP server interfaces. PHP currently will load into Apache, IIS, AOLServer, Roxen and THTTPD. Alternatively, it can be run as a CGI module. 
Lots of database interfaces. PHP currently will work with MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle, Informix, PostgreSQL and many others. These are binary level interfaces, and ODBC is also provided for those situations where the database is not supported. 
And lots of other modules... when a PHP user wants to interface to particular library, then it is easy to write an interface for it, and many have done so, and contributed to the main PHP source repository. So you can find modules for graphics routines, PDF files, Flash movies, Cybercash, calendars, XML, IMAP, POP and a host of others. If the library you need is not supported, you can either write one yourself, or employ your favourite programmer to do it. 
PEAR. The PHP Extension and Add-on Repository. Similar to the CPAN network for Perl, although still in its infancy, the idea of PEAR is to provide a set of PHP scripts that would be installed by default with the PHP installation 
Fast. PHP is normally used an Apache module and this makes it very fast. It is entirely written in C and is quite small, so loads and executes quickly with small memory footprint. 
PHP is Open Source. Almost a religious matter to some people! In purely practical terms, it means that you are not dependent on a manufacturer to fix things that don't work, nor are you forced to pay for upgrades every year to get a working version. Those of us who have waited for Allaire to get something fixed will appreciate this. 

[-dj-]

Thank you very much for this.