I've been doing basic webpages/sites for numerous years, but never really got away from basic html. So, now with the .asp and .php options, I'm not certain if perhaps I should start looking into changing my sites to a different format. Most, if not all, of my pages are .htm/.html, I really haven't taken the time to know the difference, so if someone wouldn't mind just giving me a brief explaination I would greatly appreciate the time! Thanks in advance.

The difference is essentially in interaction. With a scripting language you can parse forms, interact with databases, create user sessions, etc. Other than that, the output is always pure HTML so if your current pages work as they are I would not change them just to be up on something new.

I would add that the page extension changes nothing.
It's just to make a difference, and to reduce the server load.

For apache, for exemple, you can specify that the php engine should parse only file with .php, .php4, .php5 and .phtml and ignore every other extensions.
No need for the engine to parse a .css, if you don't ever put any php tags in it.

Originally Posted by PartyTeazer

I've been doing basic webpages/sites for numerous years, but never really got away from basic html. So, now with the .asp and .php options, I'm not certain if perhaps I should start looking into changing my sites to a different format. Most, if not all, of my pages are .htm/.html, I really haven't taken the time to know the difference, so if someone wouldn't mind just giving me a brief explaination I would greatly appreciate the time! Thanks in advance.

It seems you are referencing to file extensions. Simply put, changing file extensions won't do much.

However, there are pretty straightforward reasons for using PHP on your sites.

If you want things to be done dynamically or automatically, then PHP is great for that.

For example, you may have a guestbook and people need to submit entries to you through e-mail and then you manually put them on the html page. With PHP you'll be able to parse a html form and put it in a database, then get the entries from the database so everything is automatically done for you.

Originally Posted by tripy

For exemple

example*

Originally Posted by tripy

No need for the engine to parse a .css, if you don't ever put any php tags in it.

PHP in a CSS file? What?

example

Okay, my bad. Sorry for not being an located in an English speaking country and that I never had any English courses.
I'm much better in French...

PHP in a CSS file? What?

Yep, you could do that. If you really would want it.
Imagine something like Myspace who allow user based CSS inserted into the pages. It could be separated to an CSS file, to keep the pages semantically clean (and I'm not talking about myspace here ).
That way, you could save the CSS in a db, and simply generate the css file on the fly when it's requested.

Never had to use it.
But, for exemple, it could be useful in a javascript file.
Don't you ever wished to have a DB connection available to fetch datas used in a .js file, without putting the whole javascript in your main page ?

You have 2 solutions for that:
First: enable the parsing of PHP tags into .js files (not recommended)
second: Do an include() of the js file into the main php file. The include() makes an evaluation of the PHP tags in the included files, even if the file have not a .php extention.