PHP: About

About PHP

PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for Web development (specifically for dynamic web sites) created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. PHP originally stood for "Personal Home Page", but since changed to a recursive acronym that stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor".

PHP has long been one of the most popular languages. According to the Tiobe Index it ranked #8 in December 2018, and has been at about that ranking for many years.

PHP code may be added to web pages (combined with HTML code). When done so, the filename extension is typically changed to .php. The PHP interpreter is installed on most web hosting servers. PHP is also popular in various web template systems, web content management systems, and web frameworks.

Popular PHP frameworks include:

  • Syphony
  • CakePHP
  • FuelPHP
  • Zend Framework
  • Laravel
  • CodeIgniter
  • Yii 2
  • Phalcon
  • Slim
  • PHPixie

Popular PHP Content Management Systems (CMS) include:

  • WordPress
  • Drupal
  • Joomla
  • Concrete5
  • Typo3
  • Magento
  • SilverStripe

PHP is free and can be downloaded from this web site: http://php.net/downloads.php

PHP is also included in the various web server solution stack packages

PHP was influenced by Perl, C, C++, Java, and Tcl and later went on to influence Hack.

Rasmus Lerdorf

Rasmus Lerdorf created PHP in 1994 using C. He was writing several Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programs to maintain his personal homepage and interact with with databases. Early PHP was not intended to be a new programming language. Rasmus noted in retrospect: "I don't know how to stop it, there was never any intent to write a programming language ... I have absolutely no idea how to write a programming language, I just kept adding the next logical step on the way."

Rasmus is Danish-Canadian and was born in Disko Island on Greenland then moved to Denmark when he was young. Lerdorf's family moved to Canada from Denmark in 1980, and later moved to King City, Ontario in 1983. In 1993, he graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Systems Design Engineering. In 2003, Lerdorf was named in the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

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