PHP (a recursive acronym meaning PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a computer programming language used mainly in server-side scripting. In 1995 Rasmus Lerdorf (a Danish/Greenlandic programmer) created a set of Perl scripts to help him track his web-based resume; named ‘Personal Home Page Tools’. PHP/FI (Personal Home Page / Forms Interpreter) was his first public release, written in C programming language, which allowed people to create simple dynamic web pages. This version had some basic functionality to connect to databases and interpret variables from HTML forms. The PHP/FI syntax was likened to that of Perl due to the variable structure.

In 1997 PHP/FI 2.0 was developed and had approximately 50,000 (about 1% of servers) domains reported using it. Surviving on a few people offering code and several thousand users, Rasmus had version 2 in beta until November of 1997 when he officially released it. Shortly thereafter PHP 3.0 alpha started development, by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski (two Israeli developers at the Technion IIT) as a complete rewrite of PHP/FI 2.0. The complete rewrite was due to a sever lack of power for developing eCommerce application project they were undergoing for a University.

The two new developers and Rasmus decided to announce PHP 3.0 as the official new release succeeding PHP/FI 2.0, in an effort to capture the PHP/FI’s existing users. This newly developed release was renamed from PHP/FI to simply PHP in the effort to remove lingering concepts of limited usability. Most of the features of PHP 3.0 resulted from it’s extensibility features, and the beginnings of an object oriented syntax; thus allowing a solid infrastructure for different API’s, protocols, and databases to be used and new ones developed. PHP 3.0 saw handfuls of new developers submit modules, which was the key to the projects success.

Nearing the end of 1998, PHP had been reportedly installed on approximately 10% of the all the Internet’s web servers with tens of thousands of users; after just being publicly released in June of 1998 and only nine months of testing. Shortly after versions 3’s release, Gutmans and Suraski began rewriting the PHP core, there goal to improve modularity and performance. This new core was named the ‘Zend Engine’ (a portmanteau of the designers Zeev and Andi first names.) Nearly 2 years after the release of PHP 3.0, in May of 2000, PHP 4.0 was officially released, hosting a wide range of new features. This new version brought new compatibilities, increased security, and a needed performance increase.

Over 20% of web servers reported to be installed with PHP, the user base increased to hundreds of thousands, and the development team has dozens of developers. New related projects (such as PEAR, PECL, and the documentation) have attracted dozens of more developers. In 2004 PHP 5 and its related Zend Engine 2.0 was released, after a long development period. The new release has a new object model and a myriad of other new features. For more on PHP visit Wikipedia: PHP