Author: Nathan Pace (Lead Developer)
Date: 07 Oct 2009
Categories: Web design articles
Since its creation in 1994 as a method used by its creator to maintain his own homepage, PHP has grown from a basic collection of website ‘tools’ into a fully-fledged scripting language especially suited for web development.
From small personal sites maintained by one person to some of the most visited sites on the net today like Wikipedia and Facebook, PHP has rightly found its niche in the world of the web - as of October 2008 PHP is to be found on around 33% of websites worldwide (according to http://www.nexen.net), with around 44% of UK-based websites using the latest version, PHP5. So just what makes PHP such an attractive option?
Here’s our top 10 simple reasons to choose PHP (in no particular order!):
- Free
PHP is completely free to download, install and use, whether you are a multi-national corporation or a sole trader in your office at home.
- Built for the web
PHP started life in 1994 as a collection of simple scripts written for the sole purpose of tracking visits to the author’s webpage and on-line CV. From those humble beginnings, the language was further developed over time into the language it is today.
- Works on almost all webservers and operating systems
PHP is available for pretty much all the main webservers in use today (Apache, MS IIS, Personal Web Server) and on the majority of operating systems (Linux, Unix, MS Windows, Mac OS)
- Easy integration with HTML
PHP code can be integrated within normal HTML files (which are then saved as .php files) and these can then reside the same location in your web directory as normal HTML files – no extra configuration is needed once it’s installed. If you prefer keeping code and design separate, there are ‘template’ engines available which allow you, if desired, to separate HTML and PHP completely.
- Procedural or OO programming
PHP5 supports both procedural and object-oriented programming methods.
- Database support
This is one of the most significant features of PHP, with over 20 databases natively supported and an Open Database Layer (ODBC) built in. There is also an embedded database provided with PHP5 so you don’t even need to install and run a separate database app.
- Modules for outputting more than HTML
With PHP, you can output much more than just text and HTML; image generation, PDF generation, XML code, even Flash movies can be generated through PHP (either natively or via third party extensions)
- Lots of existing scripts available
There’s a wealth of pre-written PHP scripts available to be downloaded, everything from eCommerce and shopping cart scripts to content management systems. In addition, the PEAR library (http://pear.php.net) provides lots of reusable PHP components for download.
- Frameworks available
There are now a number of open-source PHP frameworks available (CodeIgniter, Symfony, CakePHP) which can really help speed up development time by providing libraries of code for common tasks.
- Further development planned
PHP has been evolving since 1995 and it continues to evolve to this day. The latest version at the time of writing (October 2009) is 5.3.0 however PHP6 is already in the pipeline which will bring more changes and more functionality to the language.
Want to know more about PHP and its use in web development? Get in touch if you'd like more information. |
