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PHP Web Hosting
PHP is a free, open-source programming language that can be used to create dynamic Web pages and applications. It’s popularity among Web developers stems from the way PHP-enabled pages are treated exactly the same as HTML pages, simplifying matters considerably for the programmer. PHP is also famous for its functionality with many types of databases. Today, it is estimated that PHP accounts for over 20% of the domains on the Internet.
PHP is the highly evolved offspring of PHP/FI that was originally created by a programmer named Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995 as a simple set of Perl scripts for tracking hits to his online resume. Out of necessity, Lerdorf wrote a much larger C implementation, which was able to also communicate with databases, and enabled users to develop simple dynamic Web applications. PHP/FI, which stood for Personal Home Page / Forms Interpreter, included some of the basic functionality of PHP as we know it today. Lerdorf chose to post the source code of PHP/FI for everybody to see, so that anybody could use it, as well as help him fix bugs in it and improve the code. While there were several people contributing bits of code to this project by 1997, it remained largely a one-man project until the development of PHP 3.0.
Created by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski in 1997 as a complete rewrite, PHP 3.0 was the first version that closely resembles PHP as we know it today., Gutmans and Suraski decided to solicit Lerdorf’s cooperation in order to more easily build upon PHP/FI's existing user-base. Lerdorf agreed and together they announced PHP 3.0 as the official successor to PHP/FI 2.0. The new language was released in June of 1998 as simply "PHP" (acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) to eliminate the impression given by the name "PHP/FI" (acronym for Personal Home Page / Forms Interpreter) that it was for limited personal use.
Perhaps the key to PHP 3.0’s tremendous success was its capability for being extended. Open-source PHP 3.0 attracted dozens of developers to join in and submit new extension modules. In addition to providing end users with a solid infrastructure for many different databases and protocols, other key features introduced in PHP 3.0 were the object oriented syntax support and the much more powerful and consistent language syntax.
Shortly after PHP 3.0 was officially released, Gutmans and Suraski had begun working on a rewrite of PHP's core. The design goals were to improve performance of complex applications, and improve the modularity of PHP's code base. Such applications were made possible by PHP 3.0's new features and its support for a wide variety of third party databases and API’s (Application Program Interfaces), but PHP 3.0 was not designed to handle complex applications very efficiently.
The new engine, dubbed 'Zend Engine' (a combination of their first names, Zeev and Andi), met these design goals successfully, and was first introduced in mid 1999. PHP 4.0, based on this engine, and coupled with a wide range of additional new features, was officially released in May 2000, almost two years after its predecessor, PHP 3.0. In addition to the highly improved performance of this version, PHP 4.0 included other key features such as support for many more Web servers, HTTP sessions, output buffering, more secure ways of handling user input and several new language constructs. PHP 4.0 is currently the latest released version of PHP although PHP 5.0 is in testing.
PHP Web Hosting
Web hosting companies have recognized that PHP is perhaps one of the most versatile and efficient languages for developing Web applications. Today, many Web hosting companies cater specifically to owners of Web sites developed with PHP. Some hosting companies have even compiled and maintain their own version of PHP with libraries for all the bells and whistles PHP developers crave. When selecting a Web host, ask if they have thoroughly tested their hosting platform with all PHP libraries to ensure a continuous bug free performance for your Web site. Find out what versions of PHP they support as well as what pre-installed PHP modules. The less experience you have with the Web, the more support you are likely to need so make sure your Web host will be responsive to your level of expertise. If you require immediate troubleshooting, make sure they offer telephone support. Ask what type of site management tools and control panels they offer for maintenance and updates to your PHP site. Will you need your hosting company to provide maintenance for you? If so, what do they charge for maintenance services? And don’t forget about database support -- chances are you developed your site with PHP because your content is rich in information queried from one or more databases.