php date

A client wants me to make a site which stores venue events in a database and seperates them between ones which are in the future or less than a month old and ones which are more than a month old

my first thoughts are this PHP function

http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

my PHP script will set a varable at ether todays date or todays date minus 30 days and perfrom a mysql query for all dates ether after of before that date

i guessing that i will need to format the date entirely numerically so that i can use
IF (date =< todays date) {

are operrators such as < the correct way to proceed?