The acronym LAMP refers to a solution stack of software, usually free and open source software, used to run dynamic Web sites or servers. PHP is an Open Source server side scripting language which has become incredibly popular within the web devlopment community. PHP's early growth can be largely attributed to its open-source roots as a free language that is highly compatible with other (also hugely popular) Open Source technologies including MySQL, Apache and Linux.
PHP has numerous advantages over other web scripting languages including -
1. Designed for the Web - PHP has built-in features to handle heavily trafficked sites and to simplify common Web programming tasks.
2. Ease of Use - Companies gain enhanced productivity of development teams and significantly reduced time-to-market of mission critical
web applications.
3. Open Source - Collaborative development leads to rapid technology advancement, superior code quality, a massive library of prewritten code, and comprehensive developer support and documentation. Freely available code repositories and PHP frameworks allow us to create websites more rapidly, and at reduced costs for you the end user.
4. Constantly evolving - PHP is constantly being developed by thousands of programmers who work on the PHP code and suggest new directions for the language to go.
5. Highly customisable, PHP really lets the programmers get access to the core elements of the language, even to the extent of extending the language to suit their application.
6. Secure, PHP has an outstanding security record.