PHP

The entirety of this guide was written by Martian Defense, LLC

Introduction

Welcome to "PHP for Beginners"!

This section is designed to introduce you to PHP, a popular server-side scripting language widely used in web development. PHP, which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor, was first released in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf. Since then, it has evolved into a full-featured language used in over 79% of websites on the internet as of the time of writing.

PHP is primarily used to add dynamic and interactive elements to websites. It's a powerful tool for making websites more engaging and user-friendly. With PHP, you can interact with databases, manage user sessions, and even create entire web applications from scratch.

PHP has a number of features that make it an excellent choice for web development:

• Easy to learn: PHP has a gentle learning curve and is a great entry point into backend web development.

• Highly flexible: PHP can be embedded directly into HTML code. It can also be used in combination with various web template systems, web content management systems, and web frameworks.

• Open-source: PHP is open-source, which means it is free to use and has a large community of developers who can offer support and resources.

• Cross-platform: PHP can be run on any major operating system, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, and supports a wide variety of databases.

• Scalable: Websites built with PHP can handle a large number of visitors and can be easily expanded as your needs grow.

This section will guide you through the basics of PHP, including its syntax, data types, control structures, and functions, and lead you into more advanced topics such as object-oriented programming, database integration, and more.