PHP originally meant “Personal Home Page” in 1995, although now it is generally understood to mean “PHP, Hypertext Processor”. PHP was initially developed to enable interactive web and it has come a long way since its inception. PHP is also an open source high level language, which means it is free and more human friendly than other languages such as Pascal, Python or C.

In order to run PHP you will need to install a webserver such as Apache and a database like MySql. You can easily achieve this by installing software such as WAMP server that will provide you with the development environment required on your laptop or desktop. You need to have a webserver because PHP scripts are executed on the server and not on the client machine. Once you have the webserver or WAMP server set up on your computer you can start coding PHP using a text editor or a more advanced editor that provides PHP support. PHP can be embedded in to basic HTML pages allowing dynamic and interactive content.

PHP also works on the basis of tags and the opening tag is always <?php and the closing tag is ?>. You can learn the basic coding syntax by browsing the many tutorials and guides online. PHP can be used to make your website’s interactive content faster, include forms and save data to a database, enhance security and design and develop your website around a system architecture.