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PHP Tutorial · PHP Basics · Lesson 13 of 38

PHP History & Versions

How PHP grew from Rasmus Lerdorf's personal home page tools into the language behind a large share of the web, every major release on one timeline, the big leaps in PHP 7 and 8, and which version to run today.

How PHP started

In 1994, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote a few small programs in C to track visits to his online résumé. He called them Personal Home Page Tools and released them publicly in June 1995 so others could use and improve them. The next version, PHP/FI (Personal Home Page / Forms Interpreter), could also process HTML forms and talk to databases, and it spread quickly among people building dynamic websites.

In 1997, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski rewrote the parser for an e-commerce project. Together with Lerdorf they released it as PHP 3 in June 1998, renamed to the recursive acronym "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". They then rewrote the core again as the Zend Engine, which has powered every PHP version since PHP 4. PHP is developed in the open by its contributors; new features are proposed as RFCs and accepted by a vote of core developers. The PHP Foundation, founded in 2021, funds core development.

PHP's mix of easy deployment, an HTML-friendly syntax and a huge built-in function library made it the language of WordPress, Wikipedia (MediaWiki), Drupal, Magento and Laravel.

Timeline of major versions

  1. PHP 8.5Current
    • The pipe operator |> for left-to-right chains of calls
    • clone($object, [...]) to change properties while cloning, and the #[\NoDiscard] attribute
    • A built-in URI extension (RFC 3986 and WHATWG URLs), array_first() and array_last()
  2. PHP 8.4Supported
    • Property hooks (get / set on properties) and asymmetric visibility public private(set)
    • new Foo()->bar() without extra parentheses, array_find(), array_any(), array_all(), lazy objects
  3. PHP 8.3Security fixes until Dec 2027
    • Typed class constants, the #[\Override] attribute, json_validate()
  4. PHP 8.2Security fixes until Dec 2026
    • readonly classes, DNF types such as (A&B)|null; dynamic properties deprecated
  5. PHP 8.1End of life · Dec 2025
    • Enums, readonly properties, Fibers, the never return type, first-class callables strlen(...)
  6. PHP 8.0End of life · Nov 2023
    • The JIT compiler, named arguments, union types, match, the nullsafe operator ?->, attributes, constructor property promotion
  7. PHP 7.4End of life · Nov 2022
    • Typed properties, arrow functions fn($x) => $x * 2, preloading
  8. PHP 7.0End of life · Jan 2019
    • The new engine (PHPNG) made PHP up to twice as fast with much less memory
    • Scalar parameter and return types, ??, the spaceship operator <=>; engine errors become Error exceptions
  9. PHP 5.6End of life · Dec 2018
    • The last PHP 5 release; PHP 6 (a Unicode rewrite) was abandoned, so the next version was 7
  10. PHP 5.4Historic
    • Traits, short array syntax [1, 2, 3], a built-in development web server
  11. PHP 5.3Historic
    • Namespaces, closures (anonymous functions) and late static binding
  12. PHP 5.0Historic
    • Zend Engine 2 with a real object model: visibility, interfaces, exceptions
  13. PHP 4.0Historic
    • Zend Engine 1, sessions and output buffering
  14. PHP 3.0Historic
    • The rewrite by Gutmans and Suraski; extensions; renamed "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor"
  15. PHP/FI 2.0Historic
    • Form handling and database support
  16. PHP Tools 1.0Historic
    • Rasmus Lerdorf releases the Personal Home Page Tools

How PHP modernized

  • Performance. PHP 7's new engine roughly doubled speed and halved memory use, and PHP 8 added a JIT compiler for CPU-heavy code.
  • A real type system. Scalar types (7.0), typed properties (7.4), union types (8.0), enums and readonly (8.1) and typed constants (8.3) let PHP catch many bugs early, and static analysers such as PHPStan and Psalm build on them.
  • Safer defaults. Engine errors became catchable exceptions (7.0), many silent warnings became errors (8.0), and error-prone features such as dynamic properties were deprecated.
  • A predictable lifecycle. A new version ships every November. Each version gets 2 years of active support and then 2 years of security fixes.
  • A modern ecosystem. Composer (2012) and the PHP-FIG standards (PSR) made sharing packages easy, and frameworks such as Laravel and Symfony are built on them.

PHP 5 vs PHP 7 vs PHP 8

Topic PHP 5.6 PHP 7.4 PHP 8.x
Speed Baseline About 2× faster Faster still, plus an optional JIT
Types Class/array type hints only Scalar, return, nullable and property types Union, mixed, never, DNF types, enums, typed constants
Errors Fatal errors stop the script Engine errors throw Error More warnings promoted to TypeError / ValueError
Arguments Positional only Positional only Named arguments: str_pad(string: $s, length: 10)
Branching switch switch match expression
Null checks isset() everywhere ?? and ??= Also ?->
Removed — mysql_*, ereg* (removed in 7.0) each(), create_function() (removed in 8.0)

Which version should you use?

  • New projects: PHP 8.4 or 8.5. Both receive active support with bug fixes.
  • Existing projects: at least a version that still gets security fixes (8.2 or newer today; 8.2 reaches end of life on 31 December 2026). Running an end-of-life PHP version on a public server is a security risk.
  • This tutorial: examples run in your browser on PHP 8.3 (WebAssembly). Anything that needs 8.4 or 8.5 says so.

Official resources

Last reviewed 21 October 2026. Release and support dates come from the official release pages linked above.