PHP
Web· alive, actively evolving· since 1995 · Rasmus Lerdorf, Zeev Suraski, Andi Gutmans
Server-side scripting language for web pages and web applications.
Draft from 2026-10-30, not yet checked claim by claim against its sources. Help verify it.
Born from
In 1994 Rasmus Lerdorf wrote a set of small CGI programs in C to track visits to his online résumé. He called the collection Personal Home Page Tools and released its source publicly in June 1995. In 1997 Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans began rewriting its parser for an e-commerce application they were building for a university project, and PHP 3.0 was announced in June 1998.
What it trades away
Cost: Each request starts a script from scratch, so state that must survive between pages has to live in a database or cache.
Where it fits
| Slot | Fit | |
|---|---|---|
| server | ●●● | WordPress and MediaWiki run on it. |
| browser | ○○○ | Only the HTML that PHP produces reaches the browser, never the code. |
| scripts | ●●○ | Runs from the command line with the php binary. |
| data | ●○○ |
Why it exists
In 1994 Rasmus Lerdorf wrote a set of small CGI programs in C to track visits to his online résumé. He called the collection Personal Home Page Tools and released its source publicly in June 1995 (php.net history). The first version was a set of CGI binaries written in C, not a language that ran inside a page. In 1997 Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans began rewriting its parser for an e-commerce application they were building for a university project, and PHP 3.0 was announced in June 1998 as the successor to PHP/FI 2.0 (php.net history).
What it trades away
PHP starts a script for each request and discards its state at the end. That keeps deployment simple and stops one failed request from leaking into the next, but anything that must survive between pages has to live in a database or a cache. Each major version also brings compatibility work. PHP 7.0 was up to twice as fast as PHP 5.6 after a new engine, Zend Engine 3.0, and PHP 8.0 added a JIT compiler and new type features (php.net history).
Where it won
WordPress shows the reach. W3Techs puts it on 39.5 % of all websites as of its October 2026 figures (W3Techs), and WordPress’s own requirements page recommends PHP 8.3 or greater (WordPress.org). Among websites with a known server-side language, PHP is used by 69.2 % (W3Techs). MediaWiki, the software that Wikipedia runs on (MediaWiki), requires PHP 8.3.0 or later for its latest stable release (MediaWiki). In 2014 Facebook announced Hack as “a gradually-typed programming language for HHVM that interoperates seamlessly with PHP” (Facebook Engineering).
Named wins
- WordPress runs on 39.5 % of all websites (W3Techs, 30 October 2026) source
- PHP is used by 69.2 % of websites with a known server-side language source
- MediaWiki, the software Wikipedia runs on, requires PHP 8.3.0 for its latest stable release source
- Facebook's Hack, a gradually typed language for HHVM that works with PHP (2014) source
Evolution
Reacts to: C
Weigh it against: Python, Ruby, JavaScript
Timeline
- 1994Rasmus Lerdorf writes CGI programs in C to track visits to his online résumé source
- 1995Personal Home Page Tools is released to the public in June source
- 1998PHP 3.0 is announced in June as the successor to PHP/FI 2.0 source
- 2015PHP 7.0 is released, up to twice as fast as PHP 5.6 source
- 2020PHP 8.0 is released with a JIT compiler and union types source
Links
Sources
- https://www.php.net/manual/en/history.php.php
- https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress
- https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_requirements
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
- https://engineering.fb.com/2014/04/10/developer-tools/hack-developer-day-recap
- https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/
- https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology/
Unverified draft, 2026-10-30.Edit the facts · edit the story · JSON · Markdown