PHP (a recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side HTML embedded scripting language, used to create dynamic Web pages. A dynamic Web page is a page that can interact with the user viewing it, so that each page visitor sees specially customized information. PHP is open source and freely available for (primarily) use on Linux (UNIX) Web servers. It is also a great alternative to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. The PHP script is embedded within a Web page along with its HTML, just like ASP is. Before the page resolves, the Web server calls PHP to interpret and perform the operations called for in the PHP script. Any HTML page scripted in PHP is typically given a file name suffix of ".php," ".php4," or ".phtml.".
