What are scripts?

[PinkPanther]

I have seen lot of people who sell there domain names mention that they have script running on there site to display the content. I have a few questions. i would appreciate if someone can answer them

. What are Scripts ?- the basic question apologies for my ignorance
. Where to find them? are they free or where can i buy them
. Where does the script get the data to be displayed from? Is there a common pool of data from where it picks up the relevant one?
. Is it customised to the specific site or is it generic

Thanks for your time
__________________

 

[MJ]

I have seen lot of people who sell there domain names mention that they have script running on there site to display the content. I have a few questions. i would appreciate if someone can answer them

. What are Scripts ?- the basic question apologies for my ignorance
. Where to find them? are they free or where can i buy them
. Where does the script get the data to be displayed from? Is there a common pool of data from where it picks up the relevant one?
. Is it customised to the specific site or is it generic

Thanks for your time
__________________

Hey PinkPanther, Welcome to the forum.

A script simply put is a computer program. There are hundreds of programming languages out there and scripts can be made in any one of them. The post popular scripting language you will run into here on the forum is PHP (www.php.net) however many other very popular languages exist like C#, PERL, Python, and more. They each have their own unique syntaxes, just like french sounds slightly different than english, but they both communicate.

Scripts can do anything from small things like add numbers on a page, or process a "contact form" emailing out what was inputted, or do more complex things, like when you sign up for MySpace, scrtipts process your data and create your myspace page, display your pictures, etc - as there is not a human physically doing it real time, it is a script.

Scripts are different from static HTML as regular pages just exist, there is no interaction, there are no calculations, reading from databases, etc.

So basically put, scripts are programs. When I click "post" a script will process all the text I just typed and display it on the Namepros Forum. You might want to check out a tutorial on PHP (there are millions just search) and open the world of new possibilities.

Good luck! :blink:

 

[PinkPanther]

Thanks MJ for the answer and a warm welcome

So what I understand is that these scripts work into the arena of your own data and you domain name. Its not like I register a domain name and buy a script and the content on that domain is ready to be displayed from some external source. Correct me if I am wrong.

Regards
PP

 

[MJ]

Thanks MJ for the answer and a warm welcome

So what I understand is that these scripts work into the arena of your own data and you domain name. Its not like I register a domain name and buy a script and the content on that domain is ready to be displayed from some external source. Correct me if I am wrong.

Regards
PP

Domain name has nothing to do with scripts.

After you buy a domain name, to get a website up and running you need web hosting. It is basically a computer that is on 24/7 waiting for visitors. In the real world when a computer is connected to the internet is is assigned an IP address full of numbers, like 23.45.678.9. Even the computer you are using now has an IP address. This is the way computers are networked. Any computer connected to the internet can serve web pages, but usually people pay for web hosting as those computers are specifically designed for that purpose.

Since numbers though are hard to remember, they invented domain names... so instead of typing 200.14.56.3 for google.com, you can just type Google.com into your browser and make it easy to remember. (btw that is not the IP address of google I just typed random numbers. You can see the IP address if you run the command promt and type "ping google.com") Although google has lots of IPs and you will randomly get one but that is a different subject for a different time.

So, You buy a domain, say PinkPanther.com and then you buy web hosting, then you point your domain to that web host computer. From then on, it will serve your website.

However, you must build your website on that computer.... Building the website to display the content of your site is where scripts come into play.

Hope this helps!

 

[PinkPanther]

That means I need to have data in place and then I can use scripts to manipulate how data is shown on my webpage.

Rep added as a small token of thanks