WHAT IS PHP AND WHY SHOULD YOU USE IT ?

PHP is an open source scripting language that is built by using C language, which stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP initially stood for Personal Home Page but as of now, it uses a recursive acronym; meaning of which is an acronym refers to itself. 80% of the websites are being powered by PHP as of now. Even the blogging and social media channels such as Tumblr, WordPress are developed in PHP. Did you know the biggest social media application, Facebook was created entirely on PHP. All these applications generate huge traffic flow every month and PHP helps to manage this. It is simple to learn and easier to implement. It can be directly embedded into HTML and is great choice to fabricate a simple website as well as a full-fledged Software as a service application.

1. First, let’s dive into why should you use it? What are the advantages of using PHP ? Here are some to name a few :-

• It is as simple as anything can be! PHP is a great option for beginners as it’s a simple language and hence, beginner friendly. After mastering PHP, you can make you way onto new languages and program complex codes.

• Large PHP community – Since PHP was created in the fall of 1994, it’s community has only grown larger and bigger in terms of number over time. The communities are very helpful and work towards making this language more stable and secure, which brings me to my next point. There’s a lot of framework and libraries that are developed using PHP.

• Secure – The language consists of few built-in frameworks which implements encryption and other programming paradigms to make your website a tad bit secure.

• Time-saving – Since it is an interpreted language, there’s no need to compile the entire code. Hence, saving your time that you invest in something valuable.

• Freedom– Last but not the least, PHP affords you the liberty to use any operating system and web server. Almost all of the major operating systems supports PHP like Linux, Microsoft windows, macOS, RISC OS among few. Even major web servers like Apache, IIS, etc. supports it.

2. Secondly, ever wondered how do this programming language work ? How do they fetch required search results. Well, worry not. The workload of PHP is quite simple and easy to grab. Here we go:-

When you visit any website developed on PHP, an request in .php extension is sent to the server. In the server exists a PHP interpreter which recognizes the .php file and interprets it. Based on the search made on the browser, it drags out data from the database and file system and returns a HTML page customized according the user. All of these happens within a matter of one or two seconds or maybe even faster if you configure your server to be efficient.

3. Thirdly, what is PHP used for ? Here’s the treat to your inquisitive minds that you’ve been waiting for.

• Let’s start with the most obvious one. You can send emails with PHP.

• You can create e-commerce websites where you can sell physical as well as digital goods.
• Even create a membership-based website.
• Client-side web applications can also be developed using PHP.

The most important feature of PHP have to be it’s support for a wide range of databases. It is super fast and efficiently connect the user to it’s database like MySQL, Oracle to name a few. There is quite a few number of choices if you want to build a website for yourself or your client. The most popular one being JavaScript. Both JavaScript and PHP were developed around the same time. Both of them have huge communities while PHP is IA a very simple language, it is quite easy to learn. Hence, great choice as a beginner. Python has quickly emerged as one of the popular languages. Although it is highly flexible, it is mostly used in machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. While PHP is purely focused on web development. The level of connectivity PHP provides is still to be matched with that of Python. Your selection should be based on what are you using it for! Every programming language can be used for different uses. The final calling must be based on the utility of the language and what features you want to prioritize. Our skilled developer at Techie Phantoms is equipped with programming skills. We are only one email away from you. Get in touch with us !

Featured image source: Backend vector created by storyset – www.freepik.com