php versus plain html pages

[cspdinc]

I am looking to rebuild a few sites but i don't know a thing about PHP besides making a few forms and such. I can make html sites asleep... So Question?

being a php noob, should I learn -or- where should I learn this format? School? Or should I stick to basic deamweaver html page sytem. I understand the bandwith is better servere under php? Or am I incorrect. I pick up on software quite easily. (learning-wise)

Is this a system to be learned online, outa the box, or is it best to find a class on it? Just curious. Since I really dont understand PHP maybe I'm not asking the correct question.

can this saving making a site with 80k pages (galleries and all?) I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd be interested in a answer.

[StuBradley]

I am interested in what responses you will find. I am in the same situation myself.

[woj]

You could view php, as an addon to html. It allows you to create dynamic pages, and will allow you to manage your sites better and more efficiently. You should at least learn the basics, you will definitely find it useful.

[nuttyrom]

php is actually pretty easy to learn. i bought one of those o'really books and in no time writing some code.

[Net41]

What are you trying to accomplish? PHP is very simple and adaptive, and can be used with html like includes which can retrieve dynamic content.

If you have a site with 80k pages you DEFINATLY wan't to use something like php. If I am doing a site with over 3 pages I will just put the header footer and navigation in .txt files, and have them all retrieved with php. This way you can update all 3 pages with a simple edit.

Good luck, php really isn't hard unless you get into the advanced object oriented stuff.

[arnette]

i think you might be a bit confused as to what is it, its not a different format to html, its just a preprocessor for it, its additional to html, not replacing it in any way. hit me up on icq 243680554 if you want to chat about it

[naitirps]

php rocks for creating html pages... i've got a shitload of form classes, table classes, css classes... in seconds i can throw together a page.

Love it!

if you don't know html that well, just use dreamweaver to do something, peep at the source code. read up on how to make classes or functions, and off you go.

[BlueWire]

Its worth your while. The basics of php are very easy and if you know html and xml then you'll pick it up fast...

...now with that being said....dont expect to be doing some of the more complex php type projets that need lots of security....but sounds like thats not an issue for you at this point...