{"id":169,"date":"2021-03-08T03:41:04","date_gmt":"2021-03-08T03:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phptutorial.net\/?page_id=169"},"modified":"2025-04-05T13:53:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T13:53:32","slug":"what-is-php","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.phptutorial.net\/php-tutorial\/what-is-php\/","title":{"rendered":"What is PHP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Summary<\/strong>: in this tutorial, you’ll learn about PHP, how it works, what it can do, and its advantages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction to PHP #<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PHP is a server-side and general-purpose scripting language especially suited for web development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page<\/strong>. However, now, it stands for Hypertext Preprocessor<\/strong>. It’s a recursive acronym because the first word is also an acronym.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHP was created by Rasmus Lerdorf<\/a> in 1994. It’s currently maintained by the PHP Development Team<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHP is a server-side language #<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When you open a website on your web browser, for example, https:\/\/www.phptutorial.net<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The web browser sends an HTTP request to a web server where phptutorial.net is located. The web server receives the request and responds with an HTML document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this example, the web browser is a client, while the web server is the server. The client requests for a page, and the server serves the request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHP runs on the web server, processes the request, and returns the HTML document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHP is a general-purpose language #<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Regarding the purpose of programming languages, there are two main types: domain-specific and general-purpose languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Domain-specific languages are used within specific application domains. For example, SQL is a domain-specific language. It’s used mainly for querying data from relational databases and cannot be used for other purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, PHP is a general-purpose language because PHP can develop various applications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHP is a cross-platform language #<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

PHP can run on all major operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and macOS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHP can be used with all leading web servers, such as Nginx, OpenBSD, and Apache. Some cloud environments, such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS, also support PHP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHP is quite flexible. It’s not just limited to processing HTML. PHP supports generating PDF, GIF, JPEG, and PNG images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One notable feature of PHP is that it supports many databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL, db2, Oracle Database, and MongoDB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What can PHP do #<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

PHP has two main applications:<\/p>\n\n\n\n