The PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is a programming language that allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases.
- PHP is an acronym 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 is an amazing and popular language!
- It is powerful enough to be at the core of the biggest blogging system on the web (WordPress)!
- It is deep enough to run large social networks!
- It is also easy enough to be a beginner's first server side language!
- PHP files can contain text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code
- PHP code is executed on the server, and the result is returned to the browser as plain HTML
- PHP files have extension ".php"
- PHP can generate dynamic page content
- PHP can create, open, read, write, delete, 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 be used to control user-access
- 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.
- PHP runs on various platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc.)
- PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
- PHP supports 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