PHP is an acronym for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" PHP is a widely-used, open source scripting language PHP scripts are executed on the server PHP is free to download and use PHP files can contain text, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code PHP code is executed on the server, and the result is returned to the browser as plain HTML PHP files have extension ".php" PHP can generate dynamic page content PHP can create, open, read, write, delete, and close files on the server PHP can collect form data PHP can send and receive cookies PHP can add, delete, modify data in your database PHP can be used to control user-access PHP can encrypt data PHP runs on various platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, etc.) PHP is compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.) PHP supports a wide range of databases PHP is free. Download it from the official PHP resource: www.php.net PHP is easy to learn and runs efficiently on the server side