Chapter 3. Creating Dynamic Web Sites

With the fundamentals of PHP under your belt, it's time to begin building truly dynamic Web sites. Dynamic Web sites, as opposed to the static ones on which the Web was first built, are easier to maintain, are more responsive to users, and can alter their content in response to differing situations.

In this chapter, I'll be covering a hodgepodge of ideas, all used to create dynamic Web applications. These include incorporating external files, handling forms and form data in new ways, writing and using your own functions, using PHP's date() function, and sending email. What all of these concepts have in common is that more sophisticated Web applications almost always use them.