PHP is one of the most popular server-side scripting languages designed primarily for web development to build highly customizable and easy-to-maintain web solutions. As its popularity continues to rise, PHP is extensively used for developing feature-rich websites with advance functionalities. The creation of dynamic, interactive, reliable, secure and efficient web pages provides multifarious benefits.
This statistics shows the percentage of websites using various server-side programming languages. PHP emerges as the top choice for development.
But there is always a debate whether PHP Web Application Development is fading away and this language is often dismissed as unusable. So if you are working on a web development project from scratch, why would select PHP?
Evolution of PHP
The very first version of PHP was a simple set of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) binaries written in the C programming language. In 1995, PHP Tools was released to the public.
PHP 3 and 4
Formed the base of PHP 3, changing the language’s name to the recursive acronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. Afterwards, public testing of PHP 3 began, and the official launch came in June 1998.
PHP 5:
Released in July 2004, PHP 5 was released after a great deal of development and several pre-releases. PHP 5 included several dynamic features such as improved support for object-oriented programming, the PHP Data Objects (PDO) extension (this defines a lightweight and consistent interface for accessing databases) and numerous functionalities for performance enhancement.
PHP 6 and Unicode
PHP faced criticism due to lacking native Unicode support at the core language level and only supporting byte strings.
PHP 7
In 2014 and 2015, a new major PHP version was developed, which was numbered PHP 7.
Here are the reasons to select PHP development for your web projects.
Accessible to Different Content Management Systems
PHP is accessible to different CMS and can help developers meet the needs to clients in terms of scalability and functionality. Several popular CMS such as Joomla, WordPress, Drupal and more are based on PHP providing a great deal of personalization
Power of Open Source
PHP is open source and constantly enhanced by the developer community across the world. This highly dynamic community of developers ensures that PHP language always remains in sync with latest technological updates. If you hire an expert PHP developer, you can redefine your online presence by involving the use of this technology. The constant development effort being put in by the developer community ensures that the language is commonly known and remains on a friendly plane during execution.
Compatibility
Compatibility goes a long way in seamless performance. PHP works well with LINUX, UNIX, Mac, and Windows as well as with Apache and MySQL. It covers all the bases and can be executed flawlessly on all different and popular operating systems. The language is equally effective for cross-platform development, which adds to its value as a cost-effective programming language.
PHP is highly dynamic language allowing web developers and designers to create and add more updated functionalities to delight website users. Further, extensions and plugins help new developers cope up with the programming challenges.
Flexible and Dynamic
PHP-based web apps and websites are high when it comes to security. It is an encrypted language and easily scaled, lending to its dynamism and flexibility. The web apps refresh automatically without manual intervention. The language offers the greatest amount of flexibility compared to any other languages and can be customized to a great extent. An open-source language, PHP can be combined with different libraries for graphics and other special effects.
Easy to use
PHP has a quick learning curve compared to other languages. It is simple, clean and organized with well-organized syntax. This language is quick and easy to learn for new developers. Command functions of PHP are easy to decipher and does not require extensive training.
One of the reasons PHP is widely used is it’s even a PHP developer who is relatively new to PHP can code because the syntax is similar to C. This makes PHP easy to optimize.
Compared to other programming languages, PHP is one of the fastest when it comes to speed. If you are grappling with the problem of slow internet connection or poor data speed, PHP can help build a fast loading website.
As observed, connecting to the database when attempting to fetch information from the database might be a long process. It takes considerable time to connect to the database and execute the statement and getting the data. PHP performs these tasks swiftly and is faster in connecting to the database as well as using in optimum use of other important applications.
Conclusion
It is important to understand, you need to evaluate your business objectives and developer team’s technical strengths before you select PHP development. Once you partner with a reliable PHP web development company, you can be rest assured of receiving a strong developer ecosystem support to leverage the power of open source. PHP development can help companies create a unique identity online.