PHP Web Development Is A Far Cry From Its Original Inception
PHP Web Development has come a long way since it was first developed as little Perl extensions. It started off as a simple script for a home page and has grown into what is used on 200 million websites.
Flawed and hard to use for development, PHPs newer version does not have the language support that come with older versions. As for developing, the server you use and the server it is sent to are probably not compatible.
PHP does have its defects. One such defect is that the newer version, version 6, does not support as many languages as version 3. Designing in PHP is not easy. You are designing on a server that you cannot control and that normally will not support your project depending on the server that is used.
It is not a rule but develop on a Linux. The server on your computer is similar what the server is like that your program will be run on. Most localhosts are Windows based. When you put your program or website on the internet, it runs on a Linux host. That may not sound like a big deal, but it is. Servers that are Windows based are not case sensitive like Linux based servers. When you set up your site on a local host and your link is http://name.com/folderName/ it may look great. You check to make sure it works and it does. So, you deploy it to the webserver and guess what? It does not work. You will get the wonderful page not found message even if it does exist.
Linux systems are more stable.
If you just cannot tear yourself away from Windows, try to get the development environment as close to Linux as possible.
SVN and CVS are basically two sides of the same coin. SVN and CVS save your work on a system allowing you access to prior versions if necessary. You are going to need access to this. Some would say that SVN is only needed when several people are working on the same project. Basically, it gives all of them access to the file simultaneously. The SVN will deal with any conflicts that arise by combining all the work together when it can. There are those that SVN is the way to go even if you are working solo. If you ever need to go back to a prior version of a project and restore the project to a particular point, you can.
Hopefully you can tell just how relevant this information is developing as well as PHP. It is suggested that to do these two things in the order listed when getting started in developing your application that will be in a structured and controlled environment.
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