Ok so I have been assigned as webnanny at work for a site that is designed in .php - I haven't used this before and am trying to catch up asap.

I would like to continue using Dreamweaver to manage the site. Is there anything I should know about this (as opposed to HTML which I am used to)?

I also need help setting up a testing server within the Dreamweaver environment.

Someone told me that DW presents security issues with webdesign but I have no option than to use it at this point and spend endless hours poring over a PHP manual I have just downloaded!

Any help would be appreciated.

wildsaffy

Ok I'm not 100% sure what you are after.

From the sounds of it you want to set up a local server to start writing PHP code to build websites, correct?

If so download a program called WAMP, assuming you are on a windows machine.

Install PHP 5 Apache MySQL on Windows : WampServer

There are also others such as xamp etc.. different people have different preferences, but WAMP has been good for me.

You can use dreamweaver as your text editor with no issues. It reads and displays PHP files nicely.

So once you have wamp running all you need to do is navigate to http://localhost/ to view your pages etc..

May I ask what you are trying to achieve though? Delving into PHP could be very time consuming. If you are a front end designer it might be worth spending time learning how to theme an existing open source CMS such as Wordpress / Joomla / Drupal. Wordpress being the easiest to theme of the bunch.

You don't really need to know lots of PHP code to build a website. In fact its possible to build a dynamic site without knowing any php.

If you are looking to learn php code and want to code may I suggest you learn to build websites using a framework such as code ignitor?
CodeIgniter - Open source PHP web application framework

Hope that helps.

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Either you heard in correctly, or they didn't explain themselves carefully.

Security is a big issue for amatuer programmer. You can leave security holes in your PHP if you are not careful and inexperienced.

Dreamweaver is more of an enhanced text editor than a PHP development tool.

Thanks Gav.

I suppose the main thing is to be able to view the pages after editing so thank you for the WAMP link - am going to download that now.

The site is designed already - I just mainly have to make changes to text and images.

The CodeIgniter looks of interest - am going to try my hand at that.

I came into front end web design by accident and its time I tackled something meaty!

Thanks for your help.