I’ve been asked this question twice in the last 2 weeks by
people wanting to write their first Web application. So I’m
going to answer it here for anyone else interested: However, if
you are starting out writing web applications, PHP is the first
server language you should learn and here is why: - PHP is used
by a huge number of websites, both big and small. Most of
Facebook is written in PHP. Wikipedia powered by Mediawiki is
written in PHP. - WordPress, the worlds most popular open source
blog platform is written in PHP. If you know PHP you can change
it any way you like or even contribute to the community.
WordPress is used by eBay, Yahoo, Digg, The Wall Street Journal,
Techcrunch, TMZ, Mashable and of course the whole of
WordPress.com is powered by WordPress written in PHP. - Most of
the worlds best content management systems are written in PHP. -
The PHP community is massive and supportive, unlike the Ruby on
Rails community for example. - 99% of web programmers can
understand PHP, even though some don’t