PHP STORY

According to its official website at http://www.php.net www.php.net/

A Widely used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML...the main goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated web pages quickly.
PHP is a programming language that makes it possible to incorporate sophisticated business logic into otherwise static websites.The language is rapidly becoming the popular choice for data-driven web applications because of its wide support for different database systems.
PHP code is "embedded" inside a regular HTML document and is recognized and executed by the web server when the document is requested through a browser.Because is a full featured programming language you can code all manner of complex thingummies into your web pages using this technique;the server will execute your code and return  the output to the browser in the format you specify.Because PHP code is executed on the server and not on the clent,developers don't have to worry about browser-specific quirks that could cause the code to break,the codes works independently of the user's web browser.
Now,while this is fine and dandy you might be wondering exactly what makes it so popular.After all web developers have been creating Perl/CGI scripts to dynamically generate HTML pages for a long time and the gradual adoption of W3C standards by modern browser vendors has made JavaScript far less susceptible to the vagaries of proprietary extensions.So what makes it the preferred web scripting language for developers around the world?
I've always thought the reason for it popularity to be fairly simple;it has the unique distinction of being the only open-source server-side scripting language that's both easy to learn and extremely powerful to use.Unlike most modern server-side languages,it uses clear,simple syntax and delights in nonobfuscated code;this makes it easy to read and understand and encourages rapid application development.And then of course there's cost and availability- PHP is  available free of charge on the Internet for a variety of platforms and architectures,including UNIX,Microsoft Windows and Mac Os as well as for most web servers.
The first version is PHP/FI was developed by Rasmus Lerdorf as a means of monitoring page views for his online resume and slowly started making a mark in mid 1995.This version had support for some basic functions,primarily the capabilty to handle form data and support for the mSQL database.PHP/FI 1.0 was
followed by PHP/FI 2.0 and in turn quickly supplanted in 1997 by PHP 3.0.
PHP 3.0,developed by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski was where things started to get interesting.PHP 3.0 was a complete rewrite of the original PHP/FI implementation and it included support for a wider range of database,including MySQL and Oracle.PHP 3.0 was installed on hundreds of thousands of web servers and more and more people were using it to build database-backed web applications.
PHP 4.0 which was released in 2003 used a new engine to deliver better performance greater reliability and scalability support for web servers other than Apache and a host of new language features including built-in-session management and better OOP support.And as if that wasn't enough the current versions of PHP 5.0 offers a completely revamped object model that uses object handles for more consistent behavior when passing objects around,as well as abstract classes,destructors,multiple interfaces and class type hints.
PHP 5.0 also includes better exception handling,a more consistent XML toolkit improved MySQL support and a better memory manager.So far,all these changes have conspired to make PHP 5.0 the best PHP release in the language's ten-year history...............a fact amply illustrated by the April 2004 Netcraft survey,which shows in use on over fifteen million web sites. 

FEATURES
pho.to/editor/features.php 

 

As a programming language for the Web,PHP is hard to ignore.Clean syntax object-oriented fundamentals,an extensible architecture that encourages innovation,support for both current and  upcoming technologies and protocols and excellent database integration are just some of the popularity it currently enjoys in the developer community.








SIMPLICITY
https://github.com/simplicity-php
Because PHP uses a consistent and logical syntax and because it comes with a clearly written manual even novices find it easy to learn.In fact,the quickest way to learn PHP is to step through the manual's introductory tutorial and then start looking at code samples off the web.Within a few hours,you'll have learned the basics and will be confident enough to begin writing your own scripts.


PORTABILITY
www.phpwact.org/php/writing_portable_php 

With programming language,portablity- the ease with which a program can be  made to work on different platforms- is an important factor:PHP users have little to fear here,because cross-platforms development has been an important design goal of PHP.