A Complete Guide to Your PHP Server in 2020
One of the reasons why the professional developers use PHP for their web application is that PHP is a very suitable and reliable back-end programming language. In this article, you will find the complete guide to select your local/remote back-end server which runs PHP and provides necessary web tools all along. According to the StackOverflow’s 2018 survey, PHP the most used back-end language after Python and almost 1/3 of the professional developers use PHP to develop their web application. PHP as a Back-End Language PHP is a programming language that runs on the server-side, also called the back-end side. The back-end is a part of the web application that runs in the server. In other words, it interacts with the server, gets some information and relays it to the front-end to display on the screen. You can do many things on the server by using PHP including CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations. For example, when you submit a form on the web page, the back-end takes this data you filled in the form and passes it to the server, after that, the PHP code in the server saves that data in a database and sends some confirmation info to the front-side. Then the front-side displays the confirmation of your submit action. Using PHP as Back-end You can use PHP, your goal can be developing a web application, writing a command line script or developing a desktop GUI application. For developing a web application, you need PHP itself, a browser, a server supports PHP and a web hosting service. In the modern operating systems, there are web browsers, and in-built web servers (e.g. Windows: IIS and Linux/MacOS: Apache). After you obtain a web hosting, you can begin to write PHP code. If you want to use PHP language for command line scripting you don’t need any servers or browsers, and also with the PHP-GTK extension, you can develop desktop GUI applications. Select your PHP Server Before you decide to develop a PHP web application, you must first select local web server for development purposesremote web server for hosting your products. In addition to PHP Servers, if you are using some other web-tools, it’s better to use third-party programs which provide these necessary tools together. Selecting a local PHP server. XAMPP XAMPP is the most popular open-source PHP local server. XAMPP has a free Apache server and contains MariaDB, PHP, and Perl. It also supports many tools like MySQL, FileZilla, Mercury, Tomcat, and others. It allows programmers to test their applications easily. XAMPP is available for Linux, Windows and macOS systems. WAMP WampServer is a web server for Windows. WAMP is an alternative to XAMPP. It supports Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Its interface is an easy-to-use platform having Apache configurations, PHP configurations, WWW directory etc. MAMP MAMP is a free PHP local server developed for macOS systems but can also be installed under Windows. It stands for Mac, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It supports not only the Apache server but also Nginx as well. MAMP PRO, a paid-version, allows you to create separate hosts for each of your projects. LAMP LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. LAMP is developed for Linux operating systems and it includes FastCGI, OpenSSL, phpMyAdmin, ModSecurity, SQLite, Varnish, ImageMagick, xDebug, Xcache, OpenLDAP, ModSecurity, Memcache, OAuth, PEAR, PECL, APC, GD, cURL and other components and the following frameworks: ZendFramework, Symfony, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Smarty, Laravel. LEMP LEMP is a variety of LAMP. LEMP stands for Linux, NGINX, MariaDB, and PHP (Because of the pronunciation of NGINX, “E” is used instead of “N”). Apache is replaced with the NGINX and also uses MariaDB for handling database operations. It also works fine as a relational database – just like MySQL but offers some other added functionalities. AMPPS AMPPS is a combination of WAMP, MAMP and LAMP stack. The platform offers 449 Apps along with Apache, MySQL, MongoDB, PHP, Perl & Python. The platform supports both MacOS, Linux and Windows operating systems. AMPPS web server enables you to focus more on web apps rather than maintaining them. AMPPS is provided by Softaculous. AMPSS stack includes everything for website development. You can do all complex functions with just a click. WinNMP WinNMP is a development stack for Windows. It provides a lightweight, fast and stable server, based on Nginx, MariaDB, Redis, and PHP. WPИ-XM WPИ-XM is an open-source server for PHP development on Windows. WPИ-XM stands for : Windows, PHP, NGINX, Xdebug, MariaDB/MongoDB. WPИ-XM offers various easy-to-install services to developers. The stack consists of NGINX as the webserver, MariaDB as the database and PHP as the scripting and programming language. The stack includes essential utils for PHP development like Composer, Pickle, PHPUnit, phpcsfixer, PEAR out-of-the-box. EasyPHP-DEVSERVER EasyPHP Devserver is a complete and ready-to-use web server for Windows including PHP, Apache, MySQL, Nginx, PhpMyAdmin, Xdebug, PostgreSQL. Devserver is portable, modular and easy to update and extend. Devserver allows you to set up a server with the same specifications as a production server. Since it is portable, you can develop locally anywhere. Selecting hosting PHP Server When you decide to deploy your web application, you must first select your hosting server. The hosting server hosts your application, provides some built-in resources like databases, caching tools and other tools for website optimization. Today, there are lots of open-source PHP servers available. Most of them use Apache as a server, while others prefer Nginx. You can compare PHP Hosting Plans from this link. EasyPHP-Webserver turns your computer into a ready-to-use personal and dedicated server for web, database, and FTP hosting. You can host your own website on your computer and share it on the internet. Your computer acts like a web hosting service You can tune Apache (host server), MySQL (database server), PHP (web development), Filezilla (FTP server). In conclusion, When you decide to use PHP as your back-end language, you should use a local web server for development and a remote webserver to host your application. In case you need additional web tools with PHP server, you should use stack programs that provide all necessary tools together such as XAMPP, WAMP, MAMP, LAMP, LEMP, AMPPS, WinNMP, WPИ-XM, EasyPHP-DevServer. After you developed your application locally, you need to select your hosting server to deploy it. Further Reading: - How to Hire a Great PHP Developer by Toptal Read the full article
