Since the beginning of the web, people have argued over which technologies are best suited for delivering websites. As technology has diversified and user-bases have grown, it’s now commonly accepted that there is no single best web technology, and that each has its own advantages.

We have chosen to adopt and support PHP as the main technology behind our leading Web Content Management System (CMS) Amaxus for a number of reasons. Most importantly for us, we believe that our commitment to PHP translates into direct benefits for our clients. How so?

To begin with, PHP is the most commonly used web technology. This means there is a wealth of expertise in the marketplace and a large and active community of developers working with PHP to ensure it remains cutting-edge while offering rapid support for new technologies.

The result of all the time invested in PHP is tens of thousands of high-quality, re-usable libraries and a vast amount of comprehensive documentation and tutorials available online. The consistent use and development of PHP also translates into security – the technology has been tried and tested and ensures straightforward deployment and support for a range of platforms.

Other important benefits of PHP include:

• Adoption of PHP by Facebook, Yahoo!, BBC and similar organisations who publish traffic-heavy websites requiring optimum performance. These organisations regularly contribute improvements back into the core platform. We all benefit from that combined, ongoing investment and experience.
• The language is celebrated as having a low barrier to entry, while still offering sophisticated programming capabilities. 
• PHP was designed specifically for the web. This means there is comprehensive support for working with APIs and SOAP, XML, remote services, varied data sources, multiple browsers and platforms, and a lot more.

For a general introduction to PHP technology, see the PHP Overview paper by Zend (PDF).