First created in 1994 as a set of scripts for homepage to display personal contents and record web page traffic, PHP has come a long way today. A server-side scripting language, which has been embedded into HTML source, it serves the purpose of building robust web pages along with superior web applications. Available as a free download, it has become the most preferred choice among the website developers all around the world. Today, PHP is installed on more than 1 million servers, which serves over 20 million websites. Not only it carries cross-platform capabilities, but it is the best competitor to Microsoft’s ASP.NET platform.

PHP offers several open source frameworks, which can be used to cater different requirement. For example, there is WordPress, Codeigniter, Drupal, Joomla, etc. for content management system. While for e-commerce development, PHP developer can use Zen Cart, Magento, osCommerce or PrestaShop. All these frameworks are backed by large user communities, which not only maintain PHP’s quality standards, but also provide exceptional support.