What is PHP?

Posted on: 04 May, 2009

PHP is a back end scripting language that is used to provide functionality to websites. You can think of it as one of several technologies that are currently used to create what are known as dynamic web pages.

Dynamic web pages differ from normal static web pages because some or all of the information that the page contains will have been generated from a data source (such as a database) and then placed into the page. This approach is extremely useful because it means that each individual page of a website does not have to be built manually. This can save a massive amount of work and make things a lot easier to update. For example say there are two on-line book stores, one is built using static pages, and the other using dynamic pages. If the static book store owner decides that he wants to put a 10% off special offer on all of his books, he would have to go through each of the html files that made up his site, and change each book price individually. When the special offer ended he would have to go back and change all of the prices again. It is easy to see how this could create a massive amount of work, especially with thousands of books. By comparison if the dynamic book store owner decides that she wants to run a 10% off offer, she would adjust this information in one place and the database that keeps the record of her pricing would make the changes to all the relevant web pages. She could change it back again just as easily. It should be easy to see why dynamic websites are a good idea if you have a lot of content that you may need to change.

For more detailed information check this page on Wikipedia.