Why is PHP still one of the most popular server side scripting languages in 2019?

We all have encountered at least 10 websites in our life, as a matter of fact you guys are actually looking at one of them. But have you ever wondered how these websites are made? 

Well, today we will talk about one of the most popular server side languages in creating websites, and as you can guess by the title of this post it is PHP. 

Yes PHP is still the most popular server side scripting language in 2019 and leads in the first place with 78.9% of websites using it. 

But….. how can this be possible? 

In this article we will cover some of the points that make PHP being the most preferred server side scripting language in 2019. 

#1 – Simple and easy to learn 

Different from other languages such as Java, Python, Ruby, C++ etc. PHP is easy to learn for beginners. You don’t need to know any OOP or frameworks to start learning PHP. Coding in PHP is really simple, and yet it can be customised in so many aspects

#2 – Free to use

PHP is free to use. Being an open source language, it has a huge amount of documentation, and its PHP software license is permissive (i.e. not GNU). Furthermore, PHP comes preinstalled in most of today’s servers

#3 – Base of most well-known CMS 

We all have heard of CMS (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.) and it is great to know that they are primarily based on PHP. This leverages the ability of non-developers to actually create or edit their websites without any coding knowledge or experience.

#4 – Add-Ons and Extensions

PHP has a lot of extensions available in its default distribution. Being an open source server side scripting language PHP is prone to push developers into creating new functionalities as Extensions and Add-Ons to meet the requirements of their needs. 

#5 – Performance 

Websites developed in PHP have faster data processing features while being able to run in all of the operating systems such as Linux, Windows, etc. Being open source has allowed PHP to have major updates during the run. This has made the language faster and hopefully it will continue to do so. 

#6 – Huge variety of Frameworks 

Not only is PHP used in CMS, but it has its own frameworks as well. Being an open source language has permitted developers worldwide to create their own frameworks based in PHP. The frameworks vary from enterprise level, to simple and less robust ones. Some of the most known PHP frameworks are Laravel, Codeigniter, Symfony, Zend, Yii, Phalcon, PHPixie, etc.

There are a lot of reasons to why choosing PHP, but here at iDev believe that these 6 are the answer to why PHP is still the most preferred language when it comes to creating a website in 2019. On other articles we will compare CMS between each other, compare Frameworks and also talk about the Javascript programming language.