PHP was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf and was first released a year later in 1995, standing for Personal Home Page: Hypertext Preprocessor. Over the years, it continued to grow and is not used on millions of websites. It is mainly used in conjunction with HTML code, web management system, web template system, and other popular web frameworks. This scripting language can be run on various platforms and is compatible with most servers used today.
PHP is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language suited for web development and can be embedded in HTML. It is mainly focused on server-side scripting and can do so much from collecting form data, to generating dynamic page content and sending & receiving cookies. PHP can be used in three areas: server-side scripting, command line scripting, and writing desktop applications. Here are a few examples of how PHP is used in businesses: audio equipment shopping, movie theater chain ticket booking, content for augmented reality advertising display, management of a central database of college information, and more.
Many developers decide to pick up PHP because it is a versatile language that has strong community support. Many businesses choose it too because it competes well on speed, as well as the tools, framework, and best practices that protect from cyberattacks. It is also scalable when used for writing codes and in a lot of applications. Since the language is simple and flexible, developers are given more control over how they write their code. Another impressive benefit is how easy it is for applications to load which are based on PHP and connected to the database.
A disadvantage of PHP is that although it is efficient and flexible, it isn’t suitable for giant content-based website development. Using more features of the frameworks causes poor performance, and it doesn’t allow modifications in online applications. These drawbacks may make you question whether PHP is necessary for your business and if you are unsure, get in touch with us and go over your project to have our expert tech engineers consult you.
Few frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, Phalcon, and so on extend the capabilities of PHP. They are often used with PHP because they speed up and standardize the development process, helping developers know where to start and how to proceed. Aside from the frameworks mentioned above, PHP also has its framework built on PHP language and offers built-in features that increase the speed and performance of your software development.
PHP is used in many places for many purposes. It can perform system functions, handle forms, gather data from files, save data to a file, return data to the user, or add, delete, modify elements within a PHP database, access cookie variables, and set cookies as well as restrict users to some pages and encrypt data.
Since PHP facilitates dynamic websites and is popular to use, it may not come as a surprise that many global name brands use PHP in their website development. Those names include Facebook, Wikipedia, Tumblr, Slack, MailChimp, Etsy, WordPress, and so on. PHP is growing in demand among the largest tech leaders, and maybe it can be implemented for you too. Consult with us to learn about our rates and what PHP can do for your business.