You want to make your websites more dynamic by adding a feedback form, creating a private area where members can upload images that are automatically resized, or perhaps storing all your content in a database. The problem is, you're not a programmer and the thought of writing code sends a chill up your spine. Or maybe you've dabbled a bit in PHP and MySQL, but you can't get past baby steps. If this describes you, then you've just found the right book.

Introduction:

Many of today’s web development books and articles cover single aspects of the development life cycle, delving only into specific features rather than looking at the whole picture.

In this book, we will develop a complete web application. Although we will be using various third-party libraries and tools to aid in development, we will be developing the application from start to finish.

The focus of this book is on Web 2.0, a catchphrase that has been in use for a few years now and is typically used to refer to web sites or web applications that have particular characteristics.

Some of these characteristics include the following:

• Correctly using HTML/XHTML, CSS, and other standards
• Using Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to provide a responsive application without requiring a full refresh of pages
• Allowing syndication of web site content using RSS
• Adding wikis, blogs, or tags

Although not everybody is an advocate of the “Web 2.0” phrase, the term does signify forward progress in web development. And although not everybody has the need to provide a wiki or a blog on their web site, the other characteristics listed (such as correct standards usage) provide a good basis for a web site and should be used by all developers, regardless of
how they want their web site or application categorized.

I wrote this book because I want to share with other users how I build web sites. Having been a web developer for ten years now (full-time for the past seven), I have a solid understanding of a wide range of web-related topics and have much to offer newer developers or developers looking to expand their own knowledge.

Who This Book Is For

This book has been written primarily for intermediate to expert PHP programmers. Although programmers of all levels will benefit from this book, we do jump in to the deep end very quickly, so some prior knowledge of PHP is assumed.

Having said that, if you’re relatively new to PHP, you will definitely benefit from this book because it will formalize some of the techniques you have already learned and will show you some different ways of approaching various problems.

In this book, I have made the assumption that you are familiar with HTML and CSS, although since most of the code developed in this book is PHP and JavaScript, an advanced knowledge of HTML and CSS is not critical. All JavaScript code is explained thoroughly, which, in combination with the Prototype JavaScript library we will be using, makes the listings relatively
straightforward.

Packt Publishing (March 20, 2006)
PDF | 256 pages | English | 5.5mb

Smarty PHP Template Programming And Applications

by Hasin Hayder (Author), J. P. Maia (Author), Lucian Gheorghe (Author)

A step-by-step guide to building PHP web sites and applications using the Smarty templating engine

- Bring the benefits of Smarty to your PHP programming
-Give your designers the power to modify content and layout without PHP programming
-Produce code that is easier to debug, maintain, and modify
-Useful for both Smarty developers and users
Smarty is a templating engine for PHP. Designers who are used to working with HTML files can workwith Smarty templates, which are HTML files with simple tags while programmers work with the underlying PHP code. The Smarty engine brings the code and templates together. The result of all this is that designers can concentrate on designing, programmers can concentrate on programming, and they don't need to get in each others way so much. Even if you are developing a site on your own, Smarty is a powerful way to make your code clearer to you and others, as well as easier to debug and modify later.
This book is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of using Smarty. It will help you to:
-Install and configure Smarty on your Web server
- Understand how Smarty affects your web site architecture, and build site foundations that make the most of what Smarty offers
- Designers will learn to work with templates that contain variables and logic, to modify layouts or content of Smarty web sites
- See how Smarty caching can improve the performance of your sites
- Develop custom Smarty functions and plug-ins to incorporate into your templates
Using a step-by-step approach based on realistic examples, the expert authors show you how to use Smarty in your own PHP development. The book is ideal for PHP developers who are new to Smarty, and for web designers who are working with PHP developers who are using Smarty.