Enter PHP

PHP (acronym for: PHP Hypertext Preprocessor), is a server-side embedded scripting language. This
means that it works within an HTML document to confer to it the capacity of generating content on
demand. You can convert your site into a web application, not just a collection of static pages with
information that may not get updated quite so often, which may be alright for a "personal" web site
(yes, we all have made such a beast), but not for one that is going to be used for business or for
education.
You may be asking "But, why PHP? There are so many other options like ASP, Cold Fusion, Perl,
Java, Python, even good old shell/awk/sed scripts?", and the answer will be: simplicity, an almost
natural way of using databases and platform independence.
And did I mention it was open source?
Of course general scripting or programming languages like Perl, Python, etc. have also platform
independence, and are open source. They are great languages, and sometimes an overkill for what you
need, like using a concrete mixer to make scrambled eggs. PHP was designed to work on the web, and
in this ambit it excels; connecting and querying a database is a simple task that can be handled in 2 or
3 lines of code. The PHP scripting engine is well optimized for the response times needed on web
applications, it can even be part of the web server itself improving the throughput even more.
If it were only a matter of improving the speed of the scripts, then PHP will be one of many solutions.
But there is more to the PHP equation than that. There is the simplicity and robustness of the language
and the scripting engine. There is the connectivity to an ever increasing number of database servers,
the shorter development cycles and the ease (encouraged by the syntaxes and constructs) of creating
modular and reusable components.
You can perform tasks as simple as creating a feedback form that sends an e-mail to the web
maintainer, to a whole database driven document management system (like Midgard,
http://www.midgard-project.org/), to helpdesk or bug tracking systems (like Keystone,
http://www.stonekeep.com/keystone.php3), to a shopping cart application (like
FishCartSQL, http://www.fni.com/fcsql/), to what would be considered "middle-ware"
packages without the need for extra languages or frameworks, and whole libraries for quick and
flexible development (PHPLIB, http://phplib.netuse.de/).
Then there is the support from a widely distributed and cooperative community, with several source
repositories (like PHP Code Exchange, http://px.sklar.com/ or Berber's WeberDev
http://www.weberdev.com/), many sites with tutorials (PHPBuilder,
http://www.phpbuilder.com/; PHPWizard, http://www.phpwizard.net/, WebMonkey,
etc.) and thriving (high volume) mailing lists.
And did I mention that it is open source?
There’s no more waiting until the next release for a feature to be added or a bug to get fixed. Just take
the source, make your modifications and there you are, instant customization and complete control. No
more guessing at whether a particular function or feature is insecure, the code does not lie. And who
TEAM FLY PRESENTS
knows, maybe your modification gets to be so popular that others may want to use it (hey! instant
fame). And you cannot beat the total price for a development environment using the combination of
Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP, not only cheaper than other more proprietary environments, but also
more stable and robust. As Eric Raymond said "given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow".