A Long time ago in a server far far a way the dark side of the development force was conspiring to make the life of any web developer  like hell by fixing them into a static page development but a few freedom fighters in 1995 created the first Personal Home Page Tools(the first PHP) to create a dynamic web pages that would make web development much easier… OK now seriously

What is PHP stands for?

  • PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Processor
  • It runs on the server and client won’t see any of your code only the final code as a web-page, Image,etc.
  • Open-source and Free to download

What can PHP do?

Well using PHP you can do a lot of things here is just a list of a few of the features and by no means all of them:

  • Image Creation and Manipulation
  • Audio File Manipulation
  • PDF file Creation and Manipulation
  • Text File Manipulation
  • File System Management
  • Object Oriented Programming
  • File Compression and extraction
  • Database management using different Database Management Systems like MySQL,etc.
  • The normal programing stuff like manipulation of Strings, Numbers,etc.
  • Creating Dynamic, Database driven, web applications
  • using APIs and web services
  • working with templates using smarty engine
  • using different opensource platforms from cakePHP for making applications to different solutions like WordPress, Joomla, PrestaShop,etc.
  • and more…

why should you learn it and use it

  • It is flexible, because it has so many functions and commands that you will find something for almost any problem that you need to solve
  • Good community, if you don’t know the answer there are many forums and blogs out there for people who use PHP that you can use
  • Because it runs on the server and it can be installed in almost any web server PHP based programs and websites can be run on ALL Platforms.
  • Easy to Learn as you will see in this tutorial
  • It is Free to download and Install from there official website www.php.net

how useful is it

  • PHP is the base programing language for many of opensource platforms
  • PHP is the main language in most blogging platforms like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal
  • PHP is the main language behind most e-commerce solutions like zen-cart, PrestaShop and oscommerce
  • PHP can work with most web services and APIs
  • You can do a lots of different things with it

What should you know before starting