2.1 About PHP

PHP is a language optimized for generating dynamic Web sites. Theoretically it can also be used as an ordinary programming language, but only a few people use PHP that way because this is not the purpose PHP has been optimized for.

Back in 1994 Rasmus Lerdorf was looking for an easy method to program his personal Web server. He called his first attempt "Personal Home Page Tools." As you can easily imagine, these tools were basically designed for satisfying his personal demands at this early stage, nobody was thinking of something big like the PHP of today.

In 1995 these tools became more professional. A version called PHP/FI (Personal Home Page Tools/Form Interface) was released. This was the first version of PHP that really made sense and that was used by people other than Lerdorf.

After version 2 (PHP/FI), PHP was developed more rapidly, and in 1997 PHP3 was released. PHP3 was widely used and can still be found on many Web sites because it was a reliable and easy-to-program language. In contrast to many other platforms, PHP was written for the Web. Unlike Perl, PHP was designed for the Web from the ground up, so many things that are more difficult when using Perl can be done easily with the help of PHP. Of course, programming languages such as Perl have many other advantages and can also be used without a Web server, but for Web applications, PHP has become popular.

The most recent release of PHP is PHP 4, which is based on the so-called Zend engine. The Zend engine is significantly faster than any prior version of PHP because of the internal compiler.

Today PHP is a fast and reliable platform for developing Web applications. The development of PHP will continue, and many powerful features will be added to PHP just as in the past.