Light at the end of the tunnel - and it's NOT a train !

This was sitting in draft mode and, seeing it's the weekend,
rather than delete it, I've just altered it slightly . . .
Basically it's now a long . . . Thanks to All on clp !

I ploughed thro' about 2,000 post on this ng but didn't see anything
applicable to my problem.

I've just re-done my website (after 10 years of 'straight' HTML)
using CSS. At the same time I've changed to an ISP who doesn't
offer webspace as "normal", so I now have 'my own' domain and
am furiously studying for my entry-level qualification on :
"The Black Art of Servers and All That Which Is Held In Them".

Problem :
I want to use, as someone here phrased it, "some canned PHP
scripts <which> you download, modify and send up to the server"

Initially, I want to post some genealogy / family history stuff but
restrict the access to family and friends. I've used 'Locked Area' on
a website in the past for a similar purpose but there's no PERL
support on this server. It does support PHP(5) so I went snooping and
I've found 'SAS' (a freebie) at http://www.zann-marketing.com/sas/
which would appear to be just what I need.

But before I started, I tried what someone recommended :
Create a page with just the following:
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
Place it in your web server's home directory with the name phpinfo.php
and see if your browser displays the information correctly . . .

I uploaded that by FTP but it only threw a blank page at first.
So I found out how to get 'PHP Error Messages' turned on . . .

Warning: Unexpected character in input: '\' (ASCII=92) state=1 in
/customers/ian-stewart.eu/ian-stewart.eu/httpd.www/phpinfo.php
on line 2

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in
/customers/ian-stewart.eu/ian-stewart.eu/httpd.www/phpinfo.php
on line 2

Also trying :
<?php
print "Hello World";
?>

Warning: Unexpected character in input: '\' (ASCII=92) state=1 in
/customers/ian-stewart.eu/ian-stewart.eu/httpd.www/world.php
on line 2

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in
/customers/ian-stewart.eu/ian-stewart.eu/httpd.www/world.php
on line 2

Oh dear, wotzit all mean ???

Ooops. I used Wordpad rather than Notepad to create the file.
Do it again and "Hello World" and more "Info" than I need.

Now if it hadn't been for lots of helpful answers to others on here
I'd never have got that far and solved the problem.

So it's a big thanks to all from this particular (PHP) noobie
Enjoy your wekend !
.

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