What is PHP

• PHP was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf as Personal Home Page.
• Became an Apache Software Foundation project
• Name changed to PHP Hypertext Preprocessor
• Current PHP usage is approximately 10 million domains (and growing rapidly).
• Common alternatives to PHP:
  • CGI/Perl
  • VBScript (ASP)
  • Cold Fusion
• Advantages over alternatives:
  • Easy to learn and use
  • Very fast execution
  • Open source
  • Multiple platforms
  • Good builtin support for databases