PHP Fundamentals
PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development. It runs on a web server, processes requests, and produces HTML that a browser displays. Most of the web's content management systems and many large-scale applications use PHP as their primary language.
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Intro
PHP Fundamentals
PHP is a general-purpose scripting language built for web development. It runs on the server, receives HTTP requests, and returns HTML, JSON, or other output to a client. The name is a recursive acronym: PHP Hypertext Preprocessor.
Rasmus Lerdorf created the first version in 1994 as a set of CGI scripts for tracking visits to his personal homepage. The language grew through community contribution into a full programming language with object-oriented features, a type system, and a large standard library.
Why PHP exists
The web's request-response cycle is PHP's native environment. A web server receives a request, hands it to PHP, PHP executes a script, and the server sends the output back. This model means PHP scripts start fresh on each request — no long-running process to manage, no shared memory between requests unless you add explicit caching.
That simplicity made PHP the default choice for dynamic websites through the 2000s and 2010s. It remains the server-side language behind roughly 75 percent of websites whose technology is known, including WordPress, MediaWiki, and many enterprise applications.
What PHP does well
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