PHP is a scripting language used in 90% of the world’s websites. WordPress is written prominently in PHP and WordPress makes many useful functions aavailable for Web Developers like me.
PHP is a scripting language, not a compiled language like C++ or Java. All major browsers support it. You can run a php script from your browser url (ex:https://www.example.com/index.php), and you usually do, though you don’t know it since pretty URLs hide it.
PHP lives in the “Back-end”, meaning, web developers upload scripts to a folder on a web-host. The script works with a database & http and other technologies present on the server. Basically, PHP takes care of a website’s data, infrastructure – like, logging in – and builds the HTML that the server sends to your screen. A classic newbie example, called “Hello [your name]” gets your first name from the website profile you filled out, and puts it in some HTML so you see the website greeting you by name.
PHP’s big thing are arrays. It lets me build complex data structures, which I have done many, many times over the years. It has functions to sort, search, slice & dice, combine, see what 2 or more arrays have in common or what is diferent. It does forms. It creates elaborate workflows. It also sends & receive data from other places. It can turn an array into JSON, and vice versa, easily. WordPress adds many functions that lets developers do many things the WordPress way. Functions and libraries let us use technologies without having to build them from the ground up.
WordPress is a framework, it comes complete with much infrastucture, like a CMS, Media-handling, Taxonomy & User mgmt so I don’t have to build them myself. It also lets me dump data into my Javascript that’s part of my plugin. It has a REST API that lets me get & send data from another website by sending a special URL.
Leave a Reply