In 2025, the PHP programming language will turn 30 years old. PHP was created by the talented Danish programmer Rasmus Lerdorf. And although the release of the scripting language took place back in 1995, its performance has improved significantly over time.
And even today, in the era of growth and rapid development of a large number of modern web technologies, PHP still holds its ground. In addition, PHP is predicted to remain the most popular programming language for web application development in the coming years.
So, if you are still thinking, you can safely consider services from a PHP development company with extensive experience and a track record. And we will take a look at the main reasons why businesses today choose PHP.
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A few words about the PHP programming language
It is an acronym that stands for “hypertext preprocessor.” PHP is an open source scripting language designed to write web applications (scripts and scripts) that run on web servers. PHP can be easily inserted into any HTML page; it does not depend on the speed of the user’s computer or browser. PHP runs entirely on the server side.
What are the most common uses for PHP?
PHP programming language is a great choice if you need to quickly prototype and develop a static or dynamic website. The most popular areas where PHP programming is used are startups, advertising and media agencies, and small software development companies.
According to Wappalyzer (an application that allows you to identify the technologies used on a website), 82% of all websites on the internet are made in PHP. Indeed, if you consider popular social platforms such as Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Wikipedia, and Digg, they are based on PHP. The search engine Yahoo! as well as the mailing list service Mailchimp are made in PHP.
Some popular content management systems, such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, are also PHP-based. According to web technology research conducted by W3Techs, WordPress dominates the CMS systems market and is used in 25% of all websites (data as of November 8, 2015).
The key to PHP’s success and popularity lies in the advantages that this programming language offers both to developers, who find it easy to learn and use, and to end users, who believe that a website written in PHP is more user-friendly.
Why do businesses still choose PHP web programming?
1. Low development costs
PHP is open source and distributed under the GPL license. It allows you to create prototypes and ready-made websites quite quickly. There is a large community of programmers who work with PHP and share their experience: they support developers and provide a large amount of useful freely available documentation, PHP programming tutorials and guides, templates and examples, as well as PHP scripts and programs.
2- Create Agile Web Applications Quickly
The use of PHP programming frameworks allows you to create web applications in the shortest possible time. It also makes applications scalable and easily maintainable, allowing them to evolve over time. Here’s a list of the best PHP frameworks we use for this purpose: Laravel, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Symphony, Zend Framework 2, Yii, etc.
3. Crass Platformability
PHP is compatible with most operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac OSX, etc. It also supports all of the leading servers (Apache, IIS, iPlanet, etc.).
4. Support for any type of business website
A PHP-based business application or website, large or small, can be easily developed with limited time and budget. More advanced PHP programming involves creating CRM solutions, online stores, database websites, etc.
PHP programming is widely used to develop user-friendly websites and attract a quality audience to your website, which ultimately leads to a higher return on investment (ROI).
5. Easily extend the functionality of your website
You can easily extend the functionality of your website thanks to the abundance of extensions and libraries freely available on the Internet. Adding custom extensions created by PHP developers is also easy.
Note: Creating secure PHP websites can be challenging because PHP code, for the most part, is written by developers with little experience in computer security. That’s why it’s so important that the PHP programmers who develop your site have the necessary skills to protect your site from hacker attacks.
To summarize
The growth in popularity of PHP and its frameworks has been significant in recent years, and the trend is still continuing. The main business advantages of PHP are its cost-effectiveness, scalability, simplicity, compatibility, and convenience. By itself or, more often, in combination with other technologies, PHP is suitable for creating IT projects of any type: from simple websites to CRM solutions and large marketplaces.
At the same time, it is necessary to recognize that the popularity of PHP is a double-edged sword, as its ease and prevalence attract many low-skilled developers. Therefore, choosing a team in case of PHP programming development requires special care.
