PHP, originally an acronym for ‘Personal Home Page’, is now recursively defined as ‘PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor’. It is a widely used, open-source scripting language designed primarily for web development. PHP code is executed on the server-side by a web server using a PHP interpreter, such as the Zend Engine, and generates dynamic HTML content which is sent to the user’s browser.
How it works and key features
PHP’s main strength lies in its ability to create dynamic web pages. It processes data from web forms, manages user sessions and interacts efficiently with various database systems. Supported databases include MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQLite. PHP scripts are capable of generating dynamic content based on user input and managing files on the server, including creating, reading, writing and deleting them.
Key features of PHP include:
- Open source and free of charge: PHP is open source and can be downloaded, used and modified free of charge.
- Platform independence: It runs on common operating systems such as Windows, Linux and macOS, and is compatible with most web servers, such as Apache and Nginx.
- Easy to learn: PHP is considered relatively easy to learn due to its syntax, particularly for developers who are already familiar with other programming languages.
- Comprehensive ecosystem: A wide range of libraries and powerful frameworks such as Laravel and Symfony simplify the development of complex web applications.
- Security features: The language offers built-in functions for data encryption and supports secure communication protocols such as HTTPS.
A typical PHP script can be embedded directly into HTML, which makes it easier to create dynamic content. Here is an example of a simple embedding:
<!DOCTYPE html<
<html<
<head<
<title<PHP Beispiel</title<
</head<
<body<
<h1<Willkommen!</h1<
<?php
echo "<p<Der aktuelle Tag ist: " . date("d.m.Y") . "</p<";
?>
</body<
</html<Development and current relevance
PHP was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 and released in June 1995 as “Personal Home Page Tools”. Since then, it has undergone continuous development, with key milestones such as the introduction of PHP 3 in 1998 – which was rewritten by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans – and the release of the Zend Engine in 1999. PHP 5, released in 2004, introduced comprehensive object-oriented programming (OOP) and performance improvements. The PHP 7.x series, launched in 2015, brought significant performance gains and new language features.
The further development of PHP is driven by the PHP Development Team and the PHP Foundation. As of October 2025, PHP 8.4 is the current stable and supported version, which was released on 21 November 2024. PHP 8.4.13, a maintenance release, was released on 25 September 2025. The next major version, PHP 8.5, is scheduled for November 2025. Despite the emergence of other server-side languages such as Node.js and Python, PHP remains a fundamental component of the web and powers an estimated 74 per cent of all websites. This underlines its continued importance for dynamic web applications and content management systems such as WordPress.
