THATBlog

PHP was at one time known as "Personal Home Page" but evolved into something so much more powerful than just that. It's officially now known as "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" and what that means is that unlike Javascript which executes within the browser, PHP executes before it even hit's the users screen. A PHP script is not sent directly to the client by the server; instead it is parsed by the PHP binary or module, which is server-side installed.

No more worrying about whether or not your user has Javascript enabled - it matters not with PHP. The output from PHP looks and smells like pure html and to the untrained and trained eye, it is.

So, why should you be using PHP?
There are endless reasons why but I'll narrow it down to just a few. As an open source product, PHP is well supported by a talented and vigilant production team. PHP can and will run on all major operating systems without flaw. Because PHP allows you to separate HTML code from scripted elements, you will notice a significant decrease in development time on many projects. In many instances, you will be able to separate the coding stage of a project from the design and build stages. Not only can this make life easier for you as a programmer, but it also can remove obstacles that stand in the way of effective and flexible design.