We just finished our Dynamic Web Class with a demonstration of how to install MediaWiki the basis for Wikipedia. Over six weeks we covered MySQL and PHP programming and some practical applications for these things. This class has been the basis for inspiration for this interest group. The idea of becoming a programmmer, even in a limited way, can seem daunting because of the mystique that has grown up about "what programmers do". At the same time the ability to be able to go and change a piece (or write your own!) of a program so that it works better for you is a bit of magic. And fun too.

Many of the programs that are popular, particularly the content management systems, are written in PHP and often have a database behind it, most often MySQL. For people who are learning the "back end" of web pages we will be developing a space within this space to share snippits of code and some assistance in building skills in this area.