The code itself fits right inside a page's HTML, and like HTML it is made up of plain ol' text. So a page that displays the words "I am the CHICKEN MAN!" message would sit inside an HTML page named something.php, like this:

See how that works? The HTML is rendered as regular HTML, but everything inside the <?php and ?> tags gets processed as PHP.

Basic Syntax

It's time to write your own first PHP script. The basic rules of PHP are as follows:

Naming Files
In order to get a PHP script working, the file it's in or the file that it calls to do the heavy lifting must end in .php (earlier versions used the file extensions .php3 and .phtml). Like HTML, your files are saved as plain text.

Comments
It's important to get in the habit of leaving notes about your code with the comment tags so that months down the road you can make sense of what you were trying to make your script do. The way you set comments apart from your code (that you don't want displayed or executed) is with either "//" at the beginning of each line, or surrounded by "/*" and "*/" if you want to comment out several lines:

<?php

// This will be ignored. Note to self:
// Pick up ice cream, cake, and balloons.

print ("I am the CHICKEN MAN");

/*
This, too, will be ignored.
Hey, and don't forget
the spanking machine!
*/

?>

Code Syntax

Start of Code
Every piece of PHP code begins with "<?php" (or the abbreviated "<?" if your server is configured to handle that).

End of Code
The way to signify that the PHP code is finished is by adding "?>" at the end.

Every Chunk
With a few exceptions, each separate instruction that you write will end with a semicolon.

Parentheses
The typical function looks like this ...

print ( );

... where "print" is the function and the stuff that the function works on sits inside the parentheses, with a semicolon to finish it off. (Just to confuse you, "print" is the exception that also works without parentheses.) By the way, echo () is the same as print ().

Much like HTML, the actual formatting of your PHP code (where you put spaces, line breaks, etc.) will not affect the outcome except those parts of the code that tell a Web browser how to display your page. So this piece of code ...

<?php

print ("I am the CHICKEN MAN");

?>

... is effectively identical to:

<?php print ("I am the CHICKEN MAN"); ?>

Like more complicated HTML, it behooves you to use white space and tabs in your code to make the code more understandable. (Behoove you too, pal!)

Capisce? Ready to write your first script? Let's go.