PHP

PHP is a server side HTML embedded scripting language. PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor and the PHP script is not received directly by the client via the server. Instead; it is parsed by the PHP module which is server side installed.

Most of its syntax is adopted from C, Java and Perl coupled with a few more unique features. It plays a vital role in allowing web developers to rapidly write dynamically generated web pages. The PHP code is embedded within special PHP tags in an HTML page. So, when the user opens a page, the PHP code is processed by the server and then transmits the output to the visitor’s browser. This implies, that the user’s PHP script is secure and unlike the JavaScript; it cannot be stolen by anyone. It is available on various platforms like Apache and IIS. It is an open source tool and is widely used as a web development implement. PHP was designed by Rasmus Lerdorf and first appeared in the year 1995. It is developed under the PHP group and is available under the PHP license. The most recently released version of PHP is 5.2.5. Users are provided with a complete source code by the PHP group for building, extending and customizing as per their preferences. 

Uses of PHP

PHP is instrumental in offering amazing connectivity to various databases like MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL, and Generic ODBC. Moreover, PHP possesses multifunctional capabilities like checking email via POP3 or IMAP, URL encoding, setting cookies, redirecting, connecting to remote servers etc. The UNIX host offers the most widely combination of PHP-MySQL (open source products). PHP is available on over 42% of Apache Web servers which is essentially the most widely used web server on the web today. While PHP was originally designed in order to create dynamic web pages; its prime emphasis is on server-side scripting. PHP can be used with a wide variety of relational database management systems; it is available for various operating systems and is capable of running on almost any web server. Today, over nineteen million internet domains are hosted on servers with PHP installed. Popular examples of popular server-side PHP applications include phpBB, WordPress, and MediaWiki. Furthermore, PHP offers a command line interface SAPI for developing daemons, desktop and shell applications, log parsing and various other system administration tasks. Bindings to GUI libraries are provided by PHP like GTK+ (with PHP-GTK), Qt with PHP-Qt and text mode libraries like ncurses which aids in the development of a wide variety of cross-platform GUI applications.

Advantages of PHP

The greatest advantage of PHP is that it is compatible with just about all operating systems and offers high performance. It is the most ideal tool available for web programming with multiple leagues. It offers multi language support, is light-weight and everything is 100% configurable. Moreover, it offers support for most of the widely used databases.

Outsourcing PHP requirements

Companies and individuals can hire PHP programmers by outsourcing their needs to companies who offer cost effective IT solutions while being able to deliver quality work within a set time frame.