Learning PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript

About Open Source

Whether or not being open source is the reason these technologies are so popular has often been debated, but PHP, MySQL, and Apache are the three most commonly used tools in their categories (web scripting languages, databases, and web servers).

What can be said, though, is that being open source means that they have been developed in the community by teams of programmers writing the features they themselves want and need, with the original code available for all to see and change. Bugs can be found and security breaches can be prevented before they happen.

There’s another benefit: all these programs are free to use. There’s no worrying about having to purchase additional licenses if you have to scale up your website and add more servers. And you don’t need to check the budget before deciding whether to upgrade to the latest versions of these products.

In fact, we’ll cover a few other add-on products in this book that you’ll find invaluable in getting the best out of your websites. They, too, are all open source. Of course, professional support is available to purchase for all these products, should you need it—but that shouldn’t be the case for you once you’ve read this book.