What Is PHP

PHP is a server site scripting language. The full form of PHP is Hypertext Preprocessor. It is an open-source scripting language. It is widely used all over the world.

PHP is Created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. Initially, PHP is used for tracking online visitors on the web.

PHP page is, you could say that it is a file with the extension ( .PHP ) that contains a combination of HTML tags and scripts that run on a web server.

• PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor
• PHP is a widely-used, open-source scripting language
• PHP scripts are executed on the server
• PHP is free to download and use
• PHP was originally an acronym for Personal Home Pages but is now a recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.

What is a PHP File?

• PHP files can contain text, HTML, JavaScript code, and PHP code
• PHP code is executed on the server, and the result is returned to the browser as plain HTML
• PHP files have a default file extension of ".PHP"

What Can PHP Do?

• PHP can generate the dynamic page content
• PHP can create, open, read, write, and close files on the server
• PHP can collect form data
• PHP can send and receive cookies
• PHP can add, delete, modify data in your database
• PHP can restrict users to access some pages on your website
• PHP can encrypt data
• With PHP you are not limited to output HTML. You can output images, PDF files, and even Flash movies. You can also output any text, such as XHTML and XML.

Why PHP?

• PHP runs on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc.)
• PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
• PHP has support for a wide range of databases
• PHP is free. Download it from the official PHP resource: www.php.net
• PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side