If your someone like myself or run a site, you know that they are the back bone of any web site. Every web site today is made up HTML and some form of CSS. Many even now are made up of PHP. PHP on the other hand is the little guy behind everything. In fact that little web site you visited all the time is likely build using PHP.

What is PHP and how does it apply to Majin Planet?

PHP is a big part of Majin Planet, I've been using it since late 2003. My first official "project" with PHP was Anime-ENT.com which was a anime review site. I learn lot in 2003 in how not to run a web site. In fact Anime-ENT.com was by far my worst site.

When I started learning PHP, I didn't understand it very well. I pick up the basics of it really quick and I learn how to install other PHP scripts, such as IPB 1.3 and others and be able to debug them or change them to meet my needs. For the next year however, I didn't really move forward in my PHP training with Dragonball-Final.com in 2004. In fact I used the same system I used for Anime-ENT.com, which was a template system my very good friend created using a number of free open source classes.

From the fall of 2004 to 2005 I tired many different template systems to build my site and each time it turn out to be more work then it was worth. The best by far and the worst is Smarty. It can do almost anything you need, however its very large and understanding it can be almost as much if not more then learning PHP itself.

I guess in lot of ways it wasn't until I was given Majin Planet by Majin Trunks in 2005 that I really started thinking about learning PHP more and applying it to the site in such a way. I would like to think it was my very good friend, Mike who use to run DLAnime.com is really big on PHP and making web applications for his site. In fact he made a site that while simple is a clear example of what you can do with PHP in a very funny way.

In either case, I think from 2006 to now I've grown lot and for the most I think I've made up for those two or so years I really didn't move past the simple "PHP include" method and the "echo Hi Mom!" deal. With this I took what I had and merge together my board, gallery, download and site (which is nothing more then a template system) into one overall look. For the most part it worked out and as I got better at doing it I was able to take what I learn from many different PHP scripts over the years, examples I've tried online and books I've read on the subject and created what I like to dub as Majin Planet TMPL Beta 1. Which was the system used to run Majin Planet in 2006. The system was build of: Invasion Power Board, Coppermine Photo Gallery, Olate Download and TMPL Lite beta 1.

From that point I stated working on a new version with better control and a admin panel and less file edits for content. Most of what I wanted to do in the next version didn't get done. With my overall lack of time in doing it and really still learning how to use PHP and MySql it turn out to be lot of work. However after the release of TMPL Lite Beta 2 in early 2007 I decided to take a long break from coding PHP. In fact I didn't even start messing with it again until late summer (about 4 months).

After about a week or so I started work on what will become the final and full version of the system, dub Majin Planet TMPL CORE version 1. The new system as you can see, has lot of new features. Most of it you can't see unless your admin of the site. Such as the admin area. Everything can be edited from the admin area. The site is fully cache base, which means every page you view hardly makes any MySql calls. In fact this page your looking at right now makes zero calls. On the old system it would have made 5. One for the template skin, one for the the submenu, one for the content page itself and one for the "last updated" which as you can see has been removed because with the cache, it wouldn't change the date.

Well there you have it, a little bit into what makes Majin Planet, Majin Planet. For more information on the history of Majin Planet please check out the History section here.