Answer 1

The HTML input tag must have a proceeding ending.
<input></input>
You may decide to use a placeholder.
<input placeholder="type name here"></input>

Answer 2

@ghostwalker13:

<input> is a self-closing element, as <br>, <hr> or <img>: they doesn't require a closing tag ^^

@Zak15:

You cannot access to the value of the <input> fields by this way with Php:
Php preprocess the php document and so, run on server side, before html page content (without any Php code) was send to user (client side) and displayed in browser.

There are mostly 2 ways to reach your goal:

+ with Php, require to submit the form and send another document (or use AJAX to only load changes)

+ with JS, dynamically on user side, by accessing the DOM