PHP stands for Hypertext Pre-Processor and is an Open Source programming language widely used throughout the internet for dynamic websites. PHP has a relatively easy to understand and easy to lean language with a lot of support both online and offline (in books), and is widely supported by almost all web hosting companies.
PHP co-exists alongside MySQL powered databases to seamlessly communicate with built in functions and classes with the language itself, making a dynamic database-driven site easy to build.
PHP is a server side scripting language, meaning the server has to compute the arguments given to it, before it is delivered to the users browser. This differs from Javascript, for example, where Javascript can compute code “in real time” within the browser itself.
There are advantages and disadvantages to this factor, but the main advantage to all of it is that no matter if PHP is server side, it can communicate with Javascript relatively easily to create a server/client-side environment, making the user experience one of the best online experiences available.
