PHP Web Hosting

PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Processor, it is designed to develop dynamic websites which makes easy to create. PHP is available on Linux based hosting. If your business or blog relies on CMS like WordPress, or if you looking further to protect website code and customer information behind robust lines of the defense, you want a hosting provider which supports PHP.

It is an open source code and versatile to make offers for providers. Installation and configuration of PHP can be found in website cPanel which is being provided by web host, and this should not only add any of the additional cost to the hosting fees, but it will always a good idea to confirm support for an application with web host while choosing plan.

HOW PHP CHANGED WEB

In an early days of web, content was being written in text editors using HTML. So occasionally, page creator throw in bitmap image to make things up. With an advent of PHP, websites become more responsive, dynamic and faster to develop. PHP was rolled out in 1995, and important subsequent version was there which was released as version 5.

It took 5 years for PHP to become common feature on the web hosting accounts. In PHP 5, there was an approach to object oriented programming, marking leap forward in functional and ease of use. Some of the host offers PHP4 for legacy sites, this is no longer being supported officially, and advisable to transit the older websites to new version 5.

At time of writing, we are on version 5.x of PHP. Next version of PHP to be number 7. Version 6 was abandoned due to the number of different resources of platform.

WHY TO USE PHP?

PHP connects to HTML pages to the dynamic content from multimedia and databases applications, which makes easy to create content.

There are number of reasons to use PHP to develop website:

• This is being favoured by beginners because this can be incorporated in HTML documents. PHP  interpreter read items enclosed in delimiters. All this is being processed as a regular HTML. It makes easy to add dynamic chunks of code to existing site.

• PHP is lightweight option which runs on all kinds of web hosting account

• PHP is free to use, so most of the hosts are being included in hosting plans.

• PHP allows to pull out content from database, which means that a one page template can be populated with number of different contents.

• PHP can not be read by visitor, it is ideal for the secured applications like payment processing and authorization.

• If PHP is not installed, you may able to install using cPanel.

• You need PHP for many of the similar applications like WordPress.

Most of the web hosting packages come up with PHP support at zero cost, plus a range of scripts of PHP which you can install to enhance website.

Windows vs Linux for PHP

PHP was written for Linux based servers, it can be installed on operating system and platforms. It is possible to run PHP 5.3 or above on Windows server which was being offered via web hosting provider. So there are number of reasons that you should choose Windows platform for PHP scripts:

• PHP and Linux are very closely linked. Looking for support for scripts running in Windows is more difficult.

• There is lot of work involved for web hosting company, soi this might not support WIndows

Windows web hosting costs more as comparatively to Linux platform, so it is much better not to choose windows if it may have particular reason.