PHP Programming

What Does PHP Stand For and What Does It Mean?

When PHP was initially coined, it stood for Personal Homepage. However, it is now known as Hypertext Preprocessor, a recursive acronym. (It’s recursive since the first word is an abbreviation; therefore, the full meaning of the abbreviation isn’t given.)

PHP was first released 26 years ago, and it is now at version 8, which will be released in November 2020. Version 7 is, however, still the most common.

The Zend engine is by far the most popular PHP implementation. A parrot, HPVM (Hip Hop Virtual Machine), and Hip Hop, designed by Facebook, are other deployments.

PHP is mostly utilized in developing web servers, and it can be used in the browser and via the command line. If you don’t want to expose your code output in the browser, you can see it in the terminal

PHP’s Benefits

PHP has several characteristics that have contributed to its popularity, and it has been the language of choice for web servers for about 15 years. Here are some of PHP’s benefits:

Independence from Platforms: PHP is platform neutral. It works on all platforms, including Mac, Windows, and Linux, so you don’t need a special operating system.

PHP is a free and open-source programming language, which means anyone can build on top of the original code. One of the reasons Laravel, one of their frameworks, is so popular.

For total beginners, PHP is a straightforward language to learn. You’ll be able to pick it up quickly if you already know how to program it.

PHP connects to all databases: PHP can easily connect to relational and non-relational databases. As a result, it can swiftly connect to databases such as MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB, and others.

PHP has a thriving online community that is quite supportive. If you get stuck, the official literature gives instructions on how to use the features so you may swiftly address your problem.

Who Uses PHP and Why?

Several well-known companies and IT behemoths use PHP to run their servers and generate great things.

PHP is used to power Facebook’s website. As a response, the business returned the favor by publishing Hip Hop for PHP, a PHP implementation.

CMSs (Content Management Systems): The most popular content management system globally is WordPress, which is written in PHP. Drupal, Joomla, and Magento are all content management systems built with PHP. Shopify also uses PHP.

Many web hosting services, such as BlueHost, Siteground, and Whogohost, rely on PHP to run their servers.

Is PHP nearing the end of its life cycle?

Many people debate whether PHP is on the decline or not these days. Alternative server-side languages such as JavaScript (Node JS), Python, Golang, and others have been introduced and are rising in popularity.

PHP Characteristics

PHP started as a small open source project that expanded in popularity as more people learned about its advantages. Rasmus Lerdorf delivered the first version of PHP in 1994.

A recursive abbreviation for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor” is “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.”

PHP is a server-side programming language that supports HTML. It’s used to develop entire e-commerce websites and manage dynamic content, databases, and session monitoring.

It supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Sybase, Informix, and Microsoft SQL Server, to name a few.

PHP runs swiftly, especially when built as an Apache module on the Unix side. The MySQL server, once launched, executes even the most complex queries with massive result sets in record time.

PHP supports several essential protocols, including POP3, IMAP, and LDAP. PHP4 included support for Java and distributed object architectures (COM and CORBA), enabling n-tier programming for the first time.