Let's take a quick look at some of the things you need to know about PHP.

You’re a Web developer who’s breaking out from just CSS and HTML and wants to learn a language to give their website a little more power. Or you’re a Web hosting company that has been getting lots of emails from your customers that are asking you if you support PHP. Or maybe, you’ve been working with other languages and want to know what the big deal is about this dynamic scripting language called PHP.

As a long-time user of PHP, I’ve gone through the total process from complete neophyte to experienced user. Let’s take a quick look at some of the things you need to know about PHP.

WHO STARTED PHP?

PHP originally started as a side project of Rasmus Lerdorf, a developer who had been doing Web work with Perl and C and was looking for an easier way to hook up databases to websites. Originally PHP stood for Personal Home Pages, but over time the initials have come to stand for “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor”. Rasmus is still one of the driving forces behind the development of the language, but the team of contributors is now quite large.

WHERE CAN I FIND IT?

The main site for PHP can be found at http://www.php.net, but there are hundreds of mirrors around the Web where you can download the source code. Of course, the PHP home page is just one of millions of sites that are running PHP. The latest survey by Netcraft found 20,475,056 domains on 1,278,828 IP addresses running some version of PHP (numbers for April 2006).

WHAT IS PHP?

According to the main site, “PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.” It’s most common use is to act as a Web-based front-end for database content. It’s also been described as a rapid-deployment tool for Web applications since the learning curve is not very steep. Since it is a scripting language, there is no need to compile code (like you would with Java) so it allows you to quickly try out ideas.

WHEN THERE ARE PROBLEMS, WHO CAN I ASK?

PHP is an open source project, meaning that no one company is behind its development. Contributors from all around the world participate in the language’s development and there are many, many blogs and other online resources that can help users of all levels of expertise solve their problems. Zend (www.zend.com) is the major corporate backer of PHP and they offer support contracts and products to help you with your PHP development and/or hosting needs.

WHY SHOULD I USE PHP OR OFFER IT TO MY CUSTOMERS?

In my experience, PHP is best suited for websites where you have database-driven content that needs to be displayed to your users. PHP’s strength is the ease with which it integrates with all the major database servers and the literally millions of pages of tutorials out there on how to do just about anything. If you’re a Web hosting company, PHP is a solid product that is easy to install and both the PHP 4.x versions and newer PHP 5.x versions have solid support through open source development.

HOW CAN I INSTALL PHP FOR MY CUSTOMERS?

Installing PHP on a server is easy. There is support for PHP with the two major Web server software packages (Apache and Microsoft IIS), and it also can be installed to integrate with all the major database servers available (Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle to name a few). Getting PHP up-and-running for your customers is easy.