If you are a beginner web designer, most probably you have had faced the difficulty to having some dynamic contents on your site, Just think about a small Guest book, some form to be submitted directly from your site, some dynamic results based on user's previous action... All impossible with simple html!
Although Java scripts can do some of your dynamic works, like automatic form submission by email etc, but this is just client side (all work done on the computer have your page loaded, means you can't save something to server), another option remains for you is to use the 3rd party ready-made services that enables you to install the dynamic contents on your site, with there half page annoying ads! Or you have to pay them a leg or an arm to remove their text and banners!
So if you are serious about your web, its time to think about a tool that can store data on your web server, retrieve and process data directly on server and display just the final results (in simple html) on your visitor's PC. It's certainly you are thinking about the Server-Side programming language.
Now the major question arise which technology to use?
Every one wants to get maximum returns with minimum efforts. And if their is the same case with you, PHP is the most recommended solution. Let see,
PHP: Php Hypertext Processor (a recursive acronym) currently most widely-used open source server-side programming language.
PHP with the shortest learning curve, if you are already familiar with C / Java, you can start developing in PHP in just next 30 minutes!
Its highly compatible runs on any 32 bit or better platform (UNIX / Linux / Windows) without changing a bit in your codes, *1 currently 16,946,328 Domains on 1,348,793 IPs (Servers) are using PHP! *2 Another statistics is that it is supported by more then 98% web servers!
Php has remarkable Database support, PHP with MYSQL is really an awesome combination. PHPLIB is a set of libraries with most commonly required routines.
If you are inspired of Object Oriented Paradigm, PHP has it for you, OOP support in PHP is sufficient enough for most web programming related tasks, plus their is nothing to worry for the programmers don't like to use OOP.
The most major future of PHP that encourages web hosts to provide support for PHP on their servers is that its really very lite. For many simple tasks PHP running on P-133 with just 32 Mb RAM ran circles around ASP code on an NT machine having P500 with 600 Mb RAM!
For more information, www.php.net can be the best start.

*1 Stats for August 2004 from www.PHP.net
*2 Missing the actual resource!


About the Author
The Auther is Umair < hiUmair@yahoo.com > BS (Software Engineering) student in University of Karachi.