PHP, or Personal Home Page, was created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf as a simple tool to track visits to his online resume. However, it wasn’t until 1995 when he released the source code for others to use that PHP began its journey from a personal project to a powerful programming language for web development. In the next few years, PHP evolved and gained popularity among developers due to its ease of use and ability to work with databases. This led to the release of PHP 3 in 1998, which included a full-fledged programming language and an acronym change to Hypertext Preprocessor. With this update, PHP became a server-side scripting language, allowing for dynamic and interactive web pages to be created. As the internet continued to grow and evolve, so did PHP. In 2000, PHP 4 was released with significant improvements, making it more efficient and scalable for larger web applications. This version also introduced the Zend Engine, which allowed for faster execution of PHP code. With the rise of social media and e-commerce, PHP became the go-to language for building dynamic and interactive websites. In 2004, PHP 5 was released, bringing with it new features such as improved error handling and support for object-oriented programming. This version solidified PHP’s position as one of the top languages for web development. In recent years, PHP has continued to evolve and improve, with the release of PHP 7 in 2015, which significantly increased performance and introduced new features like type declarations. Today, PHP is one of the most widely used programming languages for web development, powering popular platforms like WordPress and Facebook. Its versatility and constant updates make it a reliable and powerful tool for creating everything from personal websites to complex web applications. From its humble beginnings as a personal project, PHP has become a dominant force in the world of web development and shows no signs of slowing down.