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After 20 years, PHP is one of the most widely used technologies on the internet today. The driving force behind PHP has always been to solve a problem and make things easier to do. There is no complicated installation, and you can embed PHP code directly into your HTML. PHP is a great choice for creating simple yet powerful web sites and applications.
[SOUND] Hi, I'm Alena developer,
teacher and lifelong learner.
0:01
Let me be the first to welcome
you to the PHP community.
0:08
PHP is one of the most widely used
technologies on the Internet today.
0:12
I'm almost certain that you've heard of at
least one of the many projects built on
0:16
PHP, such as WordPress Drupal,
Wikipedia or Facebook.
0:21
A conservative estimate is that
25% of the web is built on PHP.
0:26
PHP started as a personal project for
Rasmus Lerdorf for
0:31
the maintenance of his personal webpage.
0:35
At the beginning, PHP was an abbreviation
for personal home page tools.
0:38
As in PHP tools.
0:42
In 1995 these PHP tools were
released to the world and
0:44
other developers learned about it and
started to use it.
0:49
Two programmers Andy Goodman and
0:52
Steve Zeroski really liked PHP but they
found it inefficient and lacking features
0:54
they needed to power an e-commerce
application that they were developing.
0:59
They began collaborating with
Rasmus in the development of a new
1:03
independent programming language.
1:07
This entirely new language
was simply called PHP and
1:09
now stands for PHP hypertext preprocessor.
1:13
As an open source project, PHP has
a core team of around ten developers.
1:17
It also has other contributors that help
with quality assurance, documentation, and
1:22
suggestions for
bug fixes and improvements.
1:27
Besides the PHP core,
there are also many frameworks and
1:30
packages that you can use to add
functionality to your programs.
1:34
With so many people using PHP and
1:38
contributing to the community
the language continues to flourish.
1:40
PHP turned 20 old in 2015 and
also saw the release of PHP seven.
1:45
This major rewrite more than doubled
the speed of the previous version.
1:51
the driving force behind PHP has
always been to solve a problem, and
1:56
make things easier to do.
2:00
To that end there's no
complicated installation
2:02
as most servers come
pre-installed with PHP.
2:05
It's also easy to use
PHP to create a website.
2:08
You can embed PHP code
directly into your HTML
2:12
by using code blocks then immediately
preview the results in your browser.
2:15
There's no need to compile your PHP code,
as with some other languages.
2:20
So you can get up and running quickly.
2:25
PHP is a great choice for creating simple
yet powerful websites and applications.
2:26
PHP is a server side
language simply defined
2:32
a server side language is one where
the code is processed on the web's server.
2:36
This server receives a request from
a client, processes that script on
2:41
the server, and then returns the results
as an HTML response to the client machine.
2:45
In other words,
the server sends back plain HTML.
2:52
Just like the kind you would write
by hand to create a webpage.
2:56
Your web browser is the client.
2:59
So if you view the source code of a PHP
file in a web browser, you should not see
3:01
any PHP code only the HTML that the server
outputs after processing the PHP program.
3:07
In this course, I'm going to walk you
through the basics of the language
3:14
ranging from simple
statements to conditionals.
3:17
We'll be creating a simple unit converter
as well as a daily exercise program.
3:20
We'll then finish up by using
those scripts on a webpage.
3:25
I hope you're ready to get started
because I'm excited to introduce you to
3:28
the fascinating world of PHP.
3:32
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