Introduction to PHP and What is PHP

What You Should Already Know

Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript

If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home page.

What is PHP?

PHP is an acronym for Hypertext Preprocessor
PHP is a widely-used, open source scripting language
PHP scripts are executed on the server
PHP costs nothing, it is free to download and use

What is a PHP File?

PHP files can contain text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code
PHP code are executed on the server, and the result is returned to the browser as plain HTML
PHP files have extension ".php"
What Can PHP Do?
PHP can generate dynamic page content
PHP can create, open, read, write, and close files on the server
PHP can collect form data
PHP can send and receive cookies
PHP can add, delete, modify data in your database
PHP can restrict users to access some pages on your website
PHP can encrypt data
With PHP you are not limited to output HTML. You can output images, PDF files, and even Flash movies. You can also output any text, such as XHTML and XML.

Why PHP?

PHP runs on various platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc.)
PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.)
PHP supports a wide range of databases
PHP is free. Download it from the official PHP resource: www.php.net
PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side