We have been practicing web programming for several years and are skilled in all major technologies. However, we choose PHP when a negotiated project is to be done fast but functionality is at a premium. The corporate web sites, web portals or simple e-shops compiled out of numerous ready-made and reliable solutions scattered over the Internet comprise our PHP sector.

During the last few years, dynamic web applications have become as commonplace as cellular phones, palm-size computers and laser shows. These hitherto unimaginable things have ceased to be amazing. We have simply got accustomed to them. Now, visitors to e-shops or web portals think about inner mechanisms of these online facilities just as much as a teenage boy troubles his mind about radio wave theories while chatting to his girlfriend over his first cellular phone -not much!

As more and more commercial, charitable and educational organizations sought to develop and maintain sites containing dynamic client-server functionality; cheap and functional solutions became commercially viable. Web communities that had no financial goals also wished for full- featured sites with, say, chat or forum functionality. These solutions needed to cost little and be implemented quickly. PHP supports advanced technologies such as XML, XSL, and COM.

All this required a new development technology, which would

• Be free or, at least, affordable
• Be easily learned
• Allow an administrator to support a site without too much effort
• Provide good application performance