PHP

PHP is the most widespread programming language on the web. Every one of the popular content management systems — WordPress, Drupal, Joomla — is written in it, and it is the language hosting providers support most widely.

PHP is an interpreted language, sometimes called a scripting language. That means a machine needs a working PHP interpreter installed on it before it can run a PHP program. It is why hosting descriptions make a point of mentioning PHP support: what they are telling you is that the interpreter is there.

In one sense that is inconvenient. You cannot take a file ending in .php and simply open it — at best you will see its code, at worst nothing will happen at all. But when it comes to building websites, the advantage is considerable: PHP code does not need compiling, so on a correctly configured web server it runs the moment it is saved. For development speed that matters enormously.

As things stand today, PHP is a sound choice for small and medium-sized sites, and for any situation where the cost of the early stages needs to be kept down.

For an ordinary developer or a site owner, the one detail worth paying attention to is which version of PHP the project uses, because hosting support differs sharply between the older releases and the current ones.