PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a scripting language that runs on a web server and is used to create dynamic Web pages. PHP is generally used to generate HTML prior to it being sent to a users web browser.
When a user asks for a PHP web page the server executes the code within the PHP script starting from the beginning and working its way to the end. Once the script has finished executing the resulting HTML or data is sent to the clients web browser as any other web based data would.
Typically PHP is used with MySQL which is an open source database. PHP fetches data from the MySQL database prepares it as HTML and then leaves it to the web server to pass it on.
PHP is a very popular scripting language as it is not only open source but also runs on almost any web server software available, including Apache, IIS and Nginx.
PHP can also be used to store client session data so that information collected in one page can be retained for further use in another. A typical example of this is when you add an item into your shopping cart.
PHP is a very powerful tool to a web developer and can be used in an almost infinite variety of web based applications including the generation of images, consumation of web services like RSS and XML, bulletin boards, galleries, CMS etc.
PHP's syntax is very similar to C and Perl. It's a loosely typed language, you don't have to declare variables before they are used. A PHP page usually has a .php suffix and PHP code is located between PHP tags eg:
echo 'Hello World';
As PHP has matured it has become an OOP (Object Orientated Programming) language. There are also various developer frameworks which can be used for rapid application development, including Zend Framework, Cake and Symfony.
Many of the most popular websites are built using PHP including Twitter and Facebook as well as most of the popular open source web applications like Wordpress, Joomla and Magento.
All of our Web Hosting packages support PHP