Summary

If you want to move beyond static pages and add dynamic content and true interactivity to your sites, you need to employ server-side scripting. And when you consider server-side scripting languages, many argue that PHP reigns supreme. Even though PHP is technically a direct competitor to Microsoft’s application framework, ASP.NET, Expression Web 4 comes equipped with an extensive range of tools to create, write, edit, and deploy PHP-based pages.

To test your PHP scripts locally on your computer, you first need to install PHP. In this hour, you learned how to install this free, open source software and set up Expression Web 4 so that it deploys when you test your scripted pages through the Expression Development Server.

One of the major benefits of PHP is that the scripts can live alongside HTML code, which means you can build your pages as you normally would and substitute your static content for dynamic content without breaking HTML. It also means that even with PHP scripts installed, you still have full control of the layout and functionality of your pages through the use of tags, CSS, and other techniques you learned by reading this book.