Links 

PHP Home Page
 http://www.php.net/

WampServer
 http://www.wampserver.com/en/

A Simple PHP Tutorial
 http://www.php.net/manual/en/tutorial.php

W3Schools PHP Tutorial
 http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp

Learning PHP: A Gentle Introduction
 http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=D5084

UltraEdit-32
 http://www.ultraedit.com/

PHP originally started out as PHP/FI, "Personal Home Page / Forms Interpreter", back in 1995. 10+ years later, PHP is a robust yet easy to use programming language for students to learn not only web programming, but also OOP (Object Oriented Programming) and other high-level concepts. And, in an era of shrinking budgets, PHP has another great attribute, it's free to download and use!

How do I install it on a computer? You can download it directly from the PHP.net web site and install it yourself, or go to WampServer where you can download a preconfigured copy of PHP, the Apache web server, and the MySQL data base. The good news is that all of this can be installed on any regular Windows computer (NT, XP or Vista). Windows Server is not required.

Getting started with PHP is easy. The Simple PHP Tutorial details a couple of example programs that could be used in an introduction to programming class or module. There are many, many other PHP resources out on the web. For example, W3Schools has a good introduction to PHP, as well as other web technologies like HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and XML. Another good starting point is Thomas Pletcher's "A Gentle Introduction" at CommunityMX.

Editing PHP files can be done with any text editing program, including Window's built-in NotePad. Our web master uses UltraEdit-32 to maintain the code for K12IMC.org.