Hello, my name is JesimTobz, I am a web developer with 4 years of experience. Recently, I decided to dedicate most of my time disseminating my knowledge to other who might find it useful in the journey of programming. And today in this post I would to share with you, 'Everything you need to know to get started with PHP'.

I am pretty aware you might be a beginner, I mean you just want to dive into PHP for the first time or you already know few or much about PHP. Whichever category you belong to, trust me this post is still for you. 

Let's take a look at some of the points we will discuss today in this article

  • What is PHP?
  • History of PHP
  • What is PHP use for
  • What do I need to start writing PHP?
  • How fast can I learn PHP?

What is PHP ?

PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a server-side scripting language meaning that a server execute the instructions in a script and then the sever provides the data on request, channel the request and organizes the information on a database. When a webserver receive the script it will process the request and send output to a web browser in an HTML format. A webserver database stores the information for other users not to be are to access the data and source code. PHP is one most popular programming language with 79.2% of websites using PHP. Some of the most common platform that uses PHP includes the giant Facebook, Wikipedia etc. 

PHP codes


History of PHP ?

Php was originally designed by Rasmus Lerdorf a Danish-Canadian programmer, with the developer team (Zend technologies). PHP initially stood for Personal Home Page but currently it stands for Herpertext Preprocessor. The first version of PHP version 1.0 was released in June 8th 1995 with the basic functionality php has today. The current version of PHP is 8.1.4 released 17th March 2022.

What is PHP use for?

Generally PHP is use to create dynamic content on a webpage. An extremely common thing php is use for, us to allow user login and signup from a webpage. The beautiful feature of PHP programming language is that it's very easy to use and can be combined with other languages. When PHP is embedded in an HTML documents the source file is viewed in HTML format. PHP is use to Develope web application. 

Example of web application development using PHP

  • Contents management system (CMS) implementation
  • Online Database System
  • Membership website
  • Message boards/ discussion forum
  • Blogging website
  • Communities or social media platforms.
  • Gaming web application

How fast can I learn PHP ?

For beginners learning a program could be like a suicide mission and equally frustrating. But one good feature about PHP language is that it is an open source with lots of documentations which makes it easy to use. Some Developers said from experience you could start learning php by using it's documentations while working on your project. Then little by little you get used to the functions and variable thereby learning the language from scratch. Php becomes very easy to learn if you have heard anything encounter with other languages (maybe JavaScript). It could take up to 8 weeks to master the language. But using it consistently makes it be at the tips of your hand (very simple). It also depends on your determination and your effort.

What do I need to start writing php?

Do you really need anything to start writing codes? Yes! First and foremost as a web developer you need high quality PC with good speculation. Softwares have to installed to write codes. These softwares includes:

Code editors e.g Notepad++, Atom, VS code, Sublime (recommended) or Bracket.

Local sever e.g Xampp, Wamp ( for Windows), Lamp (for Linux). And others