What is PHP?

If you’re just beginning in web development, chances are you’ve heard of PHP before. If you’d like to learn more about what PHP is, keep reading for a quick summary.

PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, but now it’s understood to be a recursive acronym standing for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. It’s a server-side scripting language meant for web development, but can also be used for general programming as well.

The language is open source is best for web development and can be used in HTML as well. Because PHP itself contains HTML coded embedded in it, HTML doesn’t need outputs to process it. In fact, because of special introductory and concluding code, HTML can jump in and out of PHP with ease.

Unlike similar code like JavaScript, PHP differentiates itself when it is executed by the server. Unlike Java Script, its results aren’t furnished solely on the client-side. So clients see the finished result of PHP, but they have no idea about the code used to create it. In fact, you can even design your server to process all HTML code with PHP, so the receiving client can’t tell the difference at all.

This is especially helpful for beginners. PHP is extremely easy to use, but no one’s the wiser. Furthermore, it offers plenty of options for advanced programmers who might want more out of their coding. Best of all, they can even integrate their advanced PHP work into HTML seamlessly.

If you’re new to web design, try PHP. It’s a great entry point that will offer you plenty of options down the road.