PHP is a server-side, HTML-embedded, scripting language which gives the user the power to create web pages ‘on the fly’ All the processing of the PHP script is carried out by the server (interpreted line by line), and the user’s browser receives the resulting HTML produced.
(In contrast, a client-side scripting language, like JavaScript, relies on the ability of the home user’s computer to be able to interpret the instructions) PHP has become the most popular server side language used for website creation.
Some of the reasons why this has become so widely used are…
- It’s free to use
- It’s open source, and as a result has developed to meet the needs of the web programmer
- There is a large community and knowledge base
- It’s cross platform (it can run on a windows or unix server)
- It’s fast