PHP also offers built-in support for MySQL databases, which makes it a top choice for many ‘back-end developers’.Because the language is so popular, there’s tons of support from almost every host available.There are hundreds – if not thousands – of tutorials on how to learn PHP, and there’s a shallow learning curve.This means it’s free to download and use as you see fit. In fact, there are just as many benefits of using PHP as there are for scripting in general: Why Most of the Web Uses PHPīecause almost 80 percent of the web uses PHP, the logical conclusion is that there’s something special about it. Along with Structured Query Language (SQL) in most cases, your database will need to use scripting to add, remove, and modify its data too.Īs such, a scripting language is an essential component – one of the ‘fab four’ – and when it comes to PHP, it’s the leading language around.Scripting will manage and work with files and folders on the web server.You can use scripting to handle cookie information.It’s the go-to way to generate dynamic content on a website, such as form data.While you’ll see some real-world examples in a later section, we can give you a few snippets to ponder: What Scripting Can Do for a SiteĪt this point, it should be clear how PHP (and scripting in general) can help a site, but you may not understand exactly what it can do. While it’s not the only server-side scripting language available (and we’ll discuss this later), it has a massive market share at nearly 80 percent. Of course, a website will also have a database too, and PHP is just as vital for accessing this and returning the data as part of the request. In fact, the only time you’ll see PHP code on the front end is due to an error: either through ‘miscoding’, or a genuine issue with your site. While you can often see the client-side languages and markup within a browser, it’s rare to see PHP. You’ll type the URL into the browser, and when you confirm the action, PHP code will run on the server and return the relevant HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Because of this, it has an important job to carry out.įor example, consider the simple task of navigating to a website. It runs on the web server, and lets whatever you do on the front end known to it. PHP is a server-side scripting language that acts as a fundamental part of the web. However, because there is also server-side functionality to consider, and most websites use databases, you also need another language to help the client- and server-sides to talk. It helps a site to become dynamic, rather than static. Almost 98 percent of the web uses JavaScript on the client-side to produce animated elements, interactivity, and more. This is the cool scripting language of the web, with immense popularity. It’s accurate to say that almost everything you see on a web page uses CSS to showcase it. You can add all sorts of colors, typography, and shapes to your site. If HTML is the structure for your site, CSS is the design language. If you take a look at our HTML5 cheat sheet, you’ll see that it lets you define ‘containers’ and divisions for your site. Consider this the structural language for your site. When it comes to the holy trinity web languages, these are all client-side. However, you could have multiple servers for handling different tasks with your database. The web server fulfills this role, and in a basic sense is a single web server. For this post’s purpose, the client is your browser (although it could be your computer if we talk about Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)). However, there are two elements to a site that need different approaches with regards to the data it provides: This lets you pull and push files in an optimal way, and has an infrastructure that’s different to a regular computer. To finish off, we’ll also talk about some alternatives to PHP, that may factor into WordPress’ future code base.Ī Brief Primer on How the Web Works (And the Programming Languages It Uses)įor the unaware, most website files live on a web server. Over the course of this post, we’re going to answer the question: What is PHP? You’ll understand the benefits of using it, how it works with WordPress, and how your site needs to be compatible with a current version of the language. Without PHP, we wouldn’t have the modern web as we know it. This lets it access databases, makes your site dynamic, and almost runs the show. PHP is a scripting language that helps WordPress’ different elements talk to the server. If you read the term and still ask, What is PHP?, we can help! While you’ll often read of the ‘holy trinity’ languages – HTML, CSS, and JavaScript – there’s also a fourth language involved that you’ll have heard of: ‘PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor’ (PHP). As such, it also uses a number of different programming languages and scripts to make everything talk and work together. As we talk about a lot on the WPKube blog, WordPress has a lot of moving parts.
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