erm, PHP (hyper text pre-processor) is a server sided web development scripting language. Its pretty powerful and probabley the most popular. Being that it is server sided you must have Apache or some other hosting utility to view the scripts. It has built in functions so it can interact with databases (mysql, ect...) hm what else...?
you start every php script with <?php and close every php script with ?>
you can find every php function at
www.php.net and if you buy any book this is the first thing you will do...
PHP Code:
<?php
echo "Hello World!";
?>
if u notice the begining and end are the same as i mentioned above. the echo statement is a means of displaying information on screen, the string is surrounded by quotes and every line (for the most part) is ended with a semi colon....i think thats the basics