PHP Web Hosting- PHP, an acronym for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor, is a scripting language that is used for the creation of dynamic web pages. PHP coding can be embedded in HTML pages, but websites designed this way require PHP webhosting plans. This article by Web Host Ranking offers details about what is PHP and who offers the best PHP web hosting.
PHP Gets Started
PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page. Rasmus Lerdorf, a Danish Greenlandic programmer wrote the first two version of PHP himself in 1994. More recently, development of PHP has been undertaken through the PHP Group, to which Lerdorf contributes. Released publicly in 1995, it was taken up by other contributors, notably Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, who rewrote the parser and created PHP3. The current version, as of 2010, is PHP 5.3.3, released in July 2010. PHP 6 is reportedly in development.
PHP script has similar syntax to some other programming languages, notably Perl and C. PHP uses tag coding to enclose statements, so PHP and HTML can be used together. The fact that PHP is executed on the server-side means that users don’t have the opportunity to view the PHP code. PHP is known for its compatibility with a variety of databases, as well as its ability to communicate across a variety of networks: not only HTTP, but also IMAP, NNTP, POP3, and SNMP.
PHP has always been a free program. In addition, it is cross-platform. The popularity of PHP increased dramatically from the late nineties to 2005. In 2008, it was holding steady at about 33% (for comparison, ASP was running at about 45% at that time. Because the Microsoft OSTC (Open Source Technology Center) is working to facilitate interoperability between PHP and Windows, and as this work continues, it is possible that there will be more PHP on Microsoft servers, which currently are primarily associated with ASP.
PHP Operation
PHP code primarily is focused on server-side scripting. PHP code embedded into an HTML document is processed by a web server’s PHP processor module in order to generate the dynamic web page content. PHP is often the language designated by P in the acronym LAMP, which refers to a web server configuration including Linux, Apache, MySQL, and either Perl, Python, or PHP (or a combination). PHP is also used in WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and MAMP (Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, PHP). Websites that were written in PHP include WordPress, Moodle, Facebook, and Wikipedia.
PHP Hosting
The meaning of PHP hosting is that PHP is a language that is supported for use on the web servers on offer. Sometimes the languages are featured and pulled out in an obvious place that you can see, but sometimes you may have to go searching for them. If that is the case, you are likely to find PHP grouped with other languages: ASP.NET on a Windows server, if PHP is offered, and along with Perl, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Java, and Cold Fusion on a Linux server.
Not all webhosts tell you upfront which languages are available, but BlueHost is one that does. BlueHost offers a single type of plan, and on its homepage, you can see the list of Ruby (RoR – Ruby on Rails), Perl, PHP, along with other features of their service, such as unlimited domains, hosting space, GB file transfer, email accounts, FTP, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
For more details, you can click their ‘Features’ menu. If you scroll down to the CGI/Databases section, you will find that PHP5 is listed, not surprising, because BlueHost tends to be fairly up-to-date with its versioning. A lot of web hosts are still offering PHP4 so BlueHost is staying in front of most of the other cheap web hosting providers while offer ing the best PHP web hosting you can get. Plus, with our BlueHost coupon, you will only pay $3.95 a month for BlueHost web hosting instead of the normal BlueHost price of $6.95 a month.