The logo of PHP, the programming language for web development, displays its name in slanted lowercase letters inside a grey-blue oval. The black letters have white outlines, and a gradient running from light to dark around the oval’s outer edge creates a highlight. The broad, rounded strokes are based on the Handel Gothic typeface. The logo was designed by Colin Viebrock. A standalone wordmark without the oval is also used. The name originally came from Personal Home Page Tools. It later became the recursive acronym PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. The language is used by millions of programmers and developers worldwide.
PHP is an open-source programming language with an international developer community. Its story began in 1994, when Rasmus Lerdorf created a set of tools for his own website. He released the source code in June 1995, allowing other developers to use and develop the project. In the late 1990s, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski reworked the language’s core, and PHP 3 was released in 1998. PHP code usually runs on a server and generates web page content, but the language is also used for command-line scripts and other software tools. Members of the PHP Group and the wider community continue its development.
