All these hosting companies raving about providing PHP, it’s available on all Linux hosting accounts and nearly every blog and ecommerce site requires it…but what is it exactly?
PHP is a large part of website development; it is a scripting language used to create dynamic content on your web pages. Some common uses for PHP are contact us forms, questionnaires, login and register now forms, forums and wordpress type blogs.
PHP allows the server to precompile the html code based on the arguments provided. So for example if you ever see a .php page on a website with a ?id=123 the php is taking the id 123 and applying it to the website content. So therefore, often you will see the details of say product 123 on your page. That same PHP page can handle all the products you like by just changing the id argument.
PHP stands for “Hypertext Pre-processor”.
HTML stands for “Hypertext Markup Language”
So PHP basically pre-processes (or compiles) the common HTML.
So in answer to the question of this article, do you need PHP?
1. If you are just installing Forum software or Blogging software, you will need PHP on your hosting account. But you won’t need to be able to program in PHP as all the programming has been done for you.
2. If you are wanting to build a dynamic website (like an online shop for instance) or have interaction with your visitors through an online form, you will need to be able to program in PHP (or know someone who can!)