PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor, was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf as a personal home page tool. It was originally designed to help Lerdorf manage his personal website and keep track of visitors. However, as the internet began to boom in the late 1990s, PHP quickly evolved into a powerful web development language. In 1995, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski rewrote PHP’s core, creating the PHP 3 version which introduced a more modular architecture and improved performance. This version also included support for databases, which helped to further expand PHP’s capabilities. As the internet continued to grow, PHP gained popularity due to its simplicity and flexibility. It allowed developers to easily create dynamic and interactive websites, making it a preferred language for many websites and web applications. In 2000, the release of PHP 4 brought even more improvements, including support for object-oriented programming. This made PHP more robust and scalable, making it a viable option for large-scale web projects. In 2004, PHP 5 was released, introducing new features such as improved error handling and support for XML. This version also laid the foundation for future developments and advancements in the language. Today, PHP is one of the most widely used web development languages, powering popular websites such as Facebook, Wikipedia, and WordPress. With the release of PHP 7 in 2015, the language continues to evolve and improve, offering developers even more tools and capabilities. From its humble beginnings as a personal home page tool, PHP has come a long way and has solidified its place as a powerful and essential language in the world of web development.