PHP was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994 for managing his personal website.
Lerdorf initially wrote a collection of Common Gateway Interface programs in the C programming language. He called the tools “Personal Home Page Tools,” which established the original meaning of the PHP name. The project later evolved into a broader server-side scripting language.
PHP became especially important for generating dynamic web pages. Its syntax incorporates influences from C, Perl, and Java, and it can be embedded directly in HTML. The language was released publicly in 1995, helping it spread among early web developers.
A common mix-up is confusing PHP’s original expansion with the modern recursive name, “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.” PHP is now maintained as an open-source project and remains closely associated with web application development.