What Is PHP Web Development

PHP is a widely-used open-source scripting language on the server-side, particularly suited for website development. PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, a recursive acronym which formerly stood for Personal Home Page. By the term open source code it is meant that PHP is a publicly accessible software language.

PHP code can be embedded in HTML code or used with various web template systems, web publishing systems and web frameworks in combination. Pages created with PHP have the extension .php. 

Presently, PHP is broadly used and has become the most demanded scripting language on the internet. PHP is a really popular scripting language specifically built for the creation of professional websites. In the last few years, PHP has become one of the major players in the industry of website development.

PHP is a server-side scripting language which means that it only needs to be installed on the main server and client computers only require a web browser to request resources from the server.

PHP is cross-platform which means that it can be installed on a number of different operating systems. For eg. Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc

There are over twenty million websites and applications on the internet created using the PHP scripting language in terms of market share. Some of the famous social websites include Facebook, Digg; blogs and cms websites include wordpress, Joomla; ecommerce websites include PrestaShop, Magento, open cart; and others include Wikipedia and yahoo. 

PHP provides a number of powerful frameworks that are perfect for responsive website development. These web frameworks are incredibly quick and efficient.  PHP is an affordable choice for the development of responsive websites, also a large community assists in smooth web development and maintenance. One of many advantages of using PHP is that it supports multiple database management systems like Oracle, Sybase, IIS, MariaDB, Apache, MySQL, other open-source databases etc. It is used for basic functions, methods, and syntax formation.

Advantages of PHP Web Development:

• Open Source - A broad community of developers are designing and maintaining it. This will help to build a network of support and ample libraries for extension.

• Speed up custom web application development - PHP programmers nowadays have to write web applications based on specific company specifications. They will need to discuss ways to ensure that the web application has a richer user experience. The tools, features and snippets of code offered by php website development has accelerated the development of custom web applications. 

• Simplify web application maintenance - PHP does not stress code readability and maintainability, unlike other programming languages. PHP frameworks ease the creation and maintenance of web applications by promoting the design of the model-view-controller (MVC). To divide a web application into templates, views, and controllers, developers may use the MVC architecture. To keep the user interface and business logic layers of the application isolated, they may use an MVC framework for PHP.

• Work with databases more efficiently - Most PHP frameworks allow a range of commonly used relational databases to work with programmers. Through offering object relational mapping (ORM) systems, these frameworks further simplify database operations. To perform database operations without writing lengthy SQL code, programmers may take advantage of ORM systems. The ORMs also allow programmers to write PHP programming language object code directly.

• Automate common web development tasks - Developers have to perform a variety of tasks in addition to writing code during the development of a web application. Some of these common tasks of web development require additional time and effort to be spent by programmers. Developers can automate common web development tasks such as caching, session management, authentication, and URL mapping with the functions and resources provided by PHP frameworks.

In general, it is possible for web developers to choose from many full-stack and micro-web frameworks for PHP. But in the functionality, usability, and performance categories, the commonly used PHP frameworks vary from each other. That is why when analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of using PHP frameworks, web developers must keep accurate project specifications in mind.