June 8, 1995
PHP Tools 1.0 announced
Rasmus Lerdorf announced Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools) 1.0 on Usenet — the first release bearing the name PHP.
What it was for
PHP started as C CGI binaries for dynamic personal home pages — guestbooks, hit counters, and form handling before databases were standard on the web. It grew into the server-side language behind WordPressA PHP CMS powering millions of sites — themes, plugins, and the block editor for publishing., WikipediaA free, collaboratively edited encyclopedia on the web — one of the largest reference works ever built. (MediaWiki), FacebookThe social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg — grew into Meta and reshaped online advertising.'s early stack, and millions of `.php` sites. Today it still powers a large share of the web via Laravel, SymfonyA PHP framework and component library — enterprise web apps and APIs across Europe., and WordPressA PHP CMS powering millions of sites — themes, plugins, and the block editor for publishing..
People
- Rasmus Lerdorf — creator
Why it's here
PHP made server-side web programming accessible on cheap shared hosting — upload a file, it runs.
Why it mattered
It democratized dynamic websites the way JavaScript later democratized front-end interactivity.
What it solved
Static HTMLHyperText Markup Language — the standard markup for structuring web pages. could not handle forms, logs, or counters; Lerdorf needed simple CGI tools without PerlPractical Extraction and Report Language — a scripting language that dominated early web CGI and sysadmin. or Tcl on his host.
Media
- ImagePHP
Colin Viebrock, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Related
- Perl 1.0 releasedDecember 18, 1987
- Symfony framework releasedOctober 22, 2005
- Laravel first beta releasedJune 9, 2011