You’ve decided to design a killer website and keep hearing about PHP coding. What exactly is PHP? PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and is a server-side scripting language. It is also an open source program that is free and designed just for web-based applications.
PHP was officially released in 1995 as a cross-platform application. This means it will run on most platforms like Unix and Windows. It is very flexible, as it can be used for server-side scripts, desktop applications, as well as command-line scripting.
PHP scripting gives programmers the ability to provide more complicated website actions to the end users. Scripts written in PHP are also easily integrated within HTML code, thus making it very popular.
PHP can be used to edit and create files, database access, create a login access system, and even use JavaScript in your site — and it’s easy. Database communications via most databases in use today — Access, SQL, MySQL among others — is one of the main features of PHP. DHTML and CSS scripts can also be added to PHP scripts.
As an interpreted language, PHP is run through an “interpreter.” This allows for the program to be run on the fly and does not require that it be compiled each time it is called. This means that these PHP scripts are both efficient and portable.
As you can see, PHP is very powerful as a programming language. And in the past years, PHP has seen a growth in versatility and functionality. The future will see more advancements in this scripting language as its functions will see additional expansion and growth. Currently, PHP developers are working on the test phase of PHP 6. We have seen new modules and functions introduced with each version, so this latest version will definitely have some exciting new additions.