Sometime in 1994, a Danish-Canadian programmer named Rasmus Lerdorf created a language called Personal Home Page Tools, or PHP for short. It was a simple language, intended only to help him manage his personal website. However, as more people discovered PHP, it quickly grew in popularity.

Over the years, PHP evolved and grew more complex. New features were added, making it a more powerful language for web development. In 2004, PHP 5 was released, introducing support for object-oriented programming and several other advanced features.

Over Time

As PHP continued to gain popularity, developers began creating frameworks to make it easier to build complex web applications. One of the most popular of these frameworks is Laravel, which was first released in 2011. Laravel provides a streamlined and elegant way to build web applications, with features like easy database migration, routing, and authentication.

Another popular PHP framework is Symfony, which was first released in 2005. Symfony is known for its modular architecture, which allows developers to choose only the components they need for their particular project. Symfony is also known for its emphasis on best practices, making it a popular choice for enterprise-level applications.

CodeIgniter is another popular PHP framework, known for its speed and simplicity. It was first released in 2006 and has since become a favorite of many developers who value its lightweight footprint and easy-to-learn syntax.

In recent years, many new PHP frameworks have emerged, including Trongate and Webby and Leaf.

Trongate is the new PHP framework for developers who love pure PHP. It's the first that is per its creator, (the only) PHP framework that has been made with stability as the main priority.

Trongate was built with a belief that PHP development should be accessible to all, without the need for self-appointed governing bodies, over-engineered standards or paid certification. The team has committed to providing a PHP framework that is both easy to use and highly effective, helping developers to create powerful applications with minimal fuss. Trongate is a lightweight and flexible framework that has HMVC as an architecture that emphasizes rapid development and scalability.

Webby, on the other hand, is an HMVC-first PHP framework designed for building simple and small web applications quickly and easily. It is built on the CodeIgniter 3 core system and has a very easy integration architecture that uses composer to allow other frameworks and libraries to work seamlessly with it. Thus its unique selling point is 'A "lego-like" PHP framework for building Simple Applications'.

Leaf is a slim and lightweight PHP framework for quickly bootstrapping clean, simple, but powerful web apps and APIs quickly and easily. Over the years, we've been focusing on delivering much simpler and more performant code, which can be used in all your PHP apps.

Version 3 of Leaf brings more to the table with a theme centering on developer experience and usability, but with all the goodies while ensuring users have the best experience as well.

Despite the many changes and advancements in PHP over the years, one thing remains constant: its popularity as a language for web development. Today, PHP powers over 75% of all websites on the internet, making it one of the most important and influential programming languages of our time.

And with new frameworks and features being developed all the time, it seems likely that PHP will continue to play an important role in web development for many years to come.