PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. PHP is now installed on more than 244 million websites and 2.1 million web servers.[2] Originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995, the reference implementation of PHP is now produced by The PHP Group.[3] While PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page[4] , it now stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, a recursive acronym.[5]
PHP code is interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module which generates the resulting web page: PHP commands can be embedded directly into an HTML source document rather than calling an external file to process data. It has also evolved to include a command-line interface capability and can be used in standalone graphical applications.
The best things in using PHP are that it is extremely simple for a newcomer, but offers many advanced features for a professional programmer. Don’t be afraid reading the long list of PHP’s features. You can jump in, in a short time, and start writing simple scripts in a few hours.
Although PHP’s development is focused on server-side scripting, you can do much more with it. Read on, and see more in the What can PHP do? section, or go right to the introductory tutorial if you are only interested in web programming.