Glossary

PHP

PHP is a widely used server-side scripting language that powers WordPress and much of the web, generating dynamic pages on the server.

PHP is a server-side scripting language that generates web pages dynamically. It powers a large fraction of the web, most visibly through wordpress and countless other applications and frameworks.

How it runs

PHP code executes on the server, producing HTML sent to the browser. On modern stacks it runs via PHP-FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) behind nginx, apache, or litespeed. An OPcache layer compiles and caches scripts for speed.

Versions matter

PHP releases bring large performance gains and security fixes; running an end-of-life version is a real risk. Most hosts let you switch the active PHP version from the cpanel interface.

Why it matters for hosting

PHP performance directly affects dynamic-page ttfb. Pairing an up-to-date PHP version with caching, opcache, and a mysql backend is the core of a fast wordpress or cms site. The PHP version a host supports is a key selection criterion.

See also

MySQL / MariaDB MySQL is the most common open-source relational database for web apps; MariaDB is its drop-in fork, both storing content for sites like WordPress. WordPress WordPress is the world’s most popular content management system, powering a large share of websites with themes, plugins, and a PHP/MySQL stack. CMS (Content Management System) A CMS is software that lets you create and manage website content through an interface, without hand-coding each page in HTML. TTFB (Time To First Byte) TTFB measures how long after a request the first byte of the response arrives, reflecting server, network, and backend processing speed.

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