PHP is a scripting language used for creating dynamic web pages. It originally stood for personal home page. It first began in 1994 and is been under constant development ever since. In addition to manipulating content on your WebPages PHP also has the ability to send HTTP headers. You can redirect users, set cookies, and manage authentication using PHP. PHP can be embedded into HTML and generally runs on a Web server. It’s necessary to configure the Web server to process PHP code and create web page content from it.
It is possible to create pages without running on a server that supports PHP if you run your own server. If an ISP serves your pages you can contact them and request that they install PHP for you.
PHP includes hundreds of base functions. By using extensions it can include thousands more. For example let’s say that you wanted to display a welcome message on your site that was dependent on the time of day. That way the visitor who landed on your site in the morning would read one message based on a particular time of day. On the other hand when someone landed on your site in the evening it would be possible for him or her to see a completely different message. You would not be able to accomplish this using a simple language like HTML. However using PHP on your site and on your Web server it is possible to first forward the file to the PHP interpreter. This way the code that is included on your page can first be analyzed and depending on the code an HTML output will be sent to your browser based on this variable. Of course in order for this work is necessary for your Web server to be configured correctly in order to handle PHP scripts.
Through the use of effective PHP scripts it is possible to accomplish many sophisticated actions on your site that would not otherwise be possible. Depending on the specifics of your business, geography, and other factors this gives you the ability to present your page in a more customized manner. One thing that can bring a website to life is the personalization of these types of variables. Rather than viewing the site in the same manner regardless of where you are located, what time of day it is, etc. you have the ability to make your viewer feel more at home by changing these variables accordingly using PHP.