Introduction to PHP
PHP is one of the most widely used server side scripting language for web development. Popular websites like Facebook, Yahoo, Wikipedia etc, and our very own Studytonight, are developed using PHP.

PHP is so popular because it’s very simple to learn, code and deploy on server, hence it has been the first choice for beginners since decades.

In this tutorial series we will be covering all the important concepts of Php language from basics to advanced and will also share some ready-to-use, useful code sinppets for beginners to kickstart their web development project.

Rasmus Lerdorf inspired the first version of PHP and participating in the later versions. It is an interpreted language and it does not require a compiler.

PHP code is executed on the server.
It can be integrated with many databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Sybase, Informix.
It is powerful to hold a content management system like WordPress, Opencart and can be used to control user access.
It supports main protocols like HTTP Basic, HTTP Digest, IMAP, FTP, and others.
One of the main reasons behind this is that PHP can be easily embedded in HTML files and HTML codes can also be written in a PHP file.
The thing that differentiates PHP from the client-side language like HTML is, PHP codes are executed on the server whereas HTML codes are directly rendered on the browser. PHP codes are first executed on the server and then the result is returned to the browser.
The only information that the client or browser knows is the result returned after executing the PHP script on the server and not the actual PHP codes present in the PHP file. Also, PHP files can support other client-side scripting languages like CSS and JavaScript.

Is PHP the right language?
If you are still confused about whether you should learn PHP or is PHP the right language for your web project, then here we have listed down some of the features and usecases of PHP language, which will help you understand how simple yet powerful PHP scripting language is and why you should learn it.

PHP is open source and free, hence you can freely download, install and start developing using it.
PHP has a very simple and easy to understand syntax, hence the learning curve is smaller as compared to other scripting languages like JSP, ASP etc.
PHP is cross platform, hence you can easily develop and move/deploy your PHP code/project to almost all the major operating systems like Windows, Linux, Mac OSX etc.
All the popular web hosting services support PHP. Also the web hosting plans for PHP are generally the amongst the cheapest plans becasue of its popularity.
Popular Content Management Systems like Joomla, Drupal etc are developed in PHP and if you want to start your own website like Studytonight, you can easily do that with PHP.
With PHP, you can create static and dynamic webpages, perform file handling operations, send emails, access and modify browser cookies, and almost everything else that you might want to implement in your web project.
PHP is fast as compared to other scripting languages like JSP and ASP.
PHP has in-built support for MySQL, which is one of the most widely used Database management system.