PHP is a server side scripting language that is capable of creating amazing web page functionality.
PHP is a server-side scripting language used for creating dynamic Web pages. PHP combines HTML and PHPs particular programming syntax to achieve its results. When an http request (that is a web page request) comes into the web server, the server parses the PHP script and then builds the webpage sending it to the users browser, ASP and ColdFusion also perform similar functions. ASP and ColdFusion however are proprietary products. ASP is owned by Microsoft and Cold Fusion is an Adobe product. PHP is Open Source meaning that it is distributed Free under the Gnu public license running on Linux, Windows and most Unix servers. PHP can be built as a binary or an Apache module that can run as CGI. PHP Apache modules, are small and very fast executing without any process creation overhead. These PHP modules return their output quickly and keep server memory usage small.
PHP not only manipulats the content of your pages, PHP offers excellent compatability and conectivity to many database types, MySQL PostgreSQL, ODBC. PHP can send HTTP headers. PHP can set cookies. PHP can manage authentication, PHP can redirect users. PHPs integration with various external libraries allows you to do many extremely useful functions such as generating PDF documents to parsing XML or resizing images.
