PHP, or Personal Home Pages, was first created in 1994 by Rasmus Lerdorf as a simple tool to track visitors on his personal webpage. It was initially just a collection of Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts written in C. However, as more and more people started using it, Lerdorf decided to release it as open-source software in 1995. This marked the beginning of the evolution of PHP from a personal home page tool to a powerful programming language. In 1997, two developers, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, rewrote the core of PHP and created version 3, which introduced a more structured and modular design. This allowed for better control and scalability, making it more appealing to developers. With the release of version 4 in 2000, PHP gained widespread popularity and became the go-to programming language for web development. It introduced features such as support for multiple protocols, improved performance, and a more advanced object-oriented programming model. In 2004, the PHP community released version 5, which included significant improvements such as a new object model, enhanced XML support, and better error handling. This version solidified PHP’s position as a powerful and versatile programming language. The most recent version, PHP 7, was released in 2015 and brought even more improvements, including faster performance and improved memory usage. It also introduced new features such as scalar type declarations and more advanced error handling. Today, PHP is used by millions of websites and is considered one of the most popular and widely used programming languages in the world. Its evolution from a simple personal home page tool to a powerful programming language is a testament to its versatility, adaptability, and continuous development by the PHP community. As technology continues to evolve, so does PHP, and it will likely remain a key player in web development for years to come.