PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a general-purpose, open-sourced (it is available for free on the web) scripting language that is used in the creation of web pages and web applications and can be embedded in HTML code. PHP is an object-oriented scripting language which means it can be executed at the server-side. PHP is a complete programming language that can be used across numerous platforms, such as Linux, many variations of the UNIX system, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X.