PHP stand for “Hypertext Preprocessor” which basically means that PHP handles data before it becomes HTML.
The PHP language is strongly based on C (not C++) in the Unix environment, there are also significant influences from perl and the Unix scripting language awk. Anyone familiar with C++ and contemplating using PHP will need to understand the differences between C++ and C. Anyone familiar with C, particularly under Unix, and awk or perl will find PHP remarkably intuitive and easy to use. You might want to follow this link to read more about C and its differences from C++.

One of the great strengths of PHP is the inclusion of a very large number of library routines. These include a more or less complete set of Unix system calls and native mode access to a large variety of databases including Oracle and MySQL. Unfortunately, many of the groups of functions are optional and may not necessarily be available in a particular implementation. For details examine the PHP local environment example in the notes.

PHP is a server side scripting language. This means that programmes in PHP are included in amongst the normal text of HTML pages and that these programs are executed by a PHP enabled WWW server. The output from the programs is included in the HTML page text as a replacement for the original PHP programme.

To say that PHP is HTML embedded means you can put it into your HTML code–HTML being the code with which all Web pages are built. Therefore, scripting with PHP can be only slightly more complicated than hand-coding HTML. If you can make a basic HTML Web page, you can make a dynamic one, too.

It is also helpful to think of PHP in terms of what it can do for you. PHP will allow you to:
- Reduce the time to create large websites.
- Create a customized user experience for visitors based on information that you have gathered from them.
- Open up thousands of possibilities for online tools. Check out PHP – HotScripts for examples of the great things that are possible with PHP.
- Allow creation of shopping carts for e-commerce websites.

PHP is a scripting language, as opposed to a programming language. This means that PHP is designed to do something only after an event occurs; for example, when a user submits a form or goes to a URL. Programming languages such as Java, C, and Perl can write standalone applications, while PHP cannot. The most popular Web scripting language is JavaScript, which commonly handles events that occur within the browser (for example, when a mouse goes over an image), and is not dissimilar to PHP, although JavaScript is a client-side technology. In fact, if you can already work with JavaScript, you won’t have a problem mastering PHP.