You will probably have noticed that the Professional web hosting Plan we offer here at CWCS includes the use of PHP5 and MySQL. If you’ve only recently moved into exploring the possibilities of a website for your business, you may be wondering what these tools are and how you might use them to your advantage.
Many websites are designed using just HTML. This is sometimes all a small business will need to advertise goods or services, display contact information or offer support. As your business grows however, the range of products and services may expand, and the amount of information you may need to update could become unmanageable using standard HTML. PHP and MySQL can make tasks like updating product information, prices and availability from a central database very simple.
More good news – both PHP and MySQL are free, and versions can be downloaded and installed on Windows, Macintosh and Linux machines. There is also a wealth of knowledge and help available online for using these powerful tools. A word of caution: if you are new to web design, the learning curve may seem steep. The benefits are however, immense. A good place to begin to learn to use PHP in conjunction with MySQL is the many free online tutorials that you can find using a good search engine like Google.
If you already have an in-house web designer, or employ a design team, then they will already be aware of the benefits. Selecting an appropriate web hosting plan from CWCS could be all you need to give them access to these tools, and the benefits for your business will soon become apparent.