PHP 8.4.1 / 7.4.22 / 5.6.40

PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a very popular general-purpose open source scripting language originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994. It’s especially suited to web development and powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world. Moreover, it's extremely simple for a newcomer but offers many advanced features for a professional programmer.

It's mainly focused on server-side scripting, so you can do anything any other CGI program can do, such as collect form data, generate dynamic page content, or send and receive cookies. But it can do much more. PHP code may be embedded into HTML or HTML5 markup, or it can be used in combination with various web template systems, web content management systems and web frameworks.

PHP code is usually processed by a PHP interpreter implemented as a module in the web server or as a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) executable. The web server software combines the results of the interpreted and executed code, which may be any type of data, including images, with the generated web page. Moreover, it may also be executed with a command-line interface (CLI) and can be used to implement standalone graphical applications.

PHP can be used on all major operating systems, including Linux, many Unix variants (including HP-UX, Solaris and OpenBSD), Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, RISC OS, and probably others. It also has support for most of the web servers today. This includes Apache, IIS, and many others. And this includes any web server that can utilize the FastCGI PHP binary, like lighttpd and nginx.