Why is PHP so popular?

Just the Gist
Many factors are at play, but the most important factors for PHP's popularity are:

• Flexible and easy to learn
• Runs anywhere
• WordPress!
• Open Source and free

PHP is just so flexible

It's flexible, fast, and easy to learn. If you know HTML, the next step might be to make it somewhat dynamic. PHP is a great language for that. This leads many newcomers to PHP start coding right away. At first it may be used in a procedural way. For small websites, that's mostly all that is needed. But you can also use it in a more object-oriented way. And guess what, PHP is a great language for that too! But being in the web-sphere of tech, the new rage is functional programming. Does this really have a place in PHP too? This would be a stupid question in an article that is all about the positive sides of what has made PHP popular, right?! Well, it's not. I don't believe in stupid questions. But YES, you can do functional programming in PHP. Also, it runs anywhere.

WordPress is just that huge

Another reason we see so many websites using PHP is that it has been around a long time. From the days of the early Web, PHP was a scripting language that provided basic features that many needed. But now, a major reason for its popularity is the widespread use of WordPress. A Content Management System (CMS) that many (or most of) the hosting services provide has seen WordPress being used by individuals as well as companies such as The New York Times and Forbes. Where a CMS is known to be used, 68% of the time it is a WordPress site.

It's open source and free

It's free and it's open source. This means that it's another licensing fee that many companies just don't have to pay, and there are organizations and individuals investing their time in making it better and more secure. This means that the economical hurdle is super-easy for anyone to get over, and the development of the language is a transparent process. Besides the major features of the language, there are also a ton of extensions ready to be used, such as opcache, xdebug, and many others.

How about you?

What are your thoughts about the popularity of PHP? Why is it so huge? Will it still be popular in 2022? Have you tried PHP, and what do you think of it? Leave a comment below ✍

Further Reading

• Functional programming in PHP: https://phptherightway.com/pages/Functional-Programming.html
• WordPress on WikiPedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress