PHP 3.0 was the first version that closely resembles PHP as it exists today. Finding PHP/FI 2.0 still inefficient and lacking features they needed to power an eCommerce application they were developing for a university project, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski of Tel Aviv, Israel, began yet another complete rewrite of the underlying parser in 1997. Approaching Rasmus online, they discussed various aspects of the current implementation and their redevelopment of PHP. In an effort to improve the engine and start building upon PHP/FI’s existing user base, Andi, Rasmus, and Zeev decided to collaborate in the development of a new, independent programming language. This entirely new language was released under a new name, that removed the implication of limited personal use that the PHP/FI 2.0 name held. It was renamed simply ‘PHP’, with the meaning becoming a recursive acronym – PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
One of the biggest strengths of PHP 3.0 was its strong extensibility features. In addition to providing end users with a mature interface for multiple databases, protocols, and APIs, the ease of extending the language itself attracted dozens of developers who submitted a variety of modules. Arguably, this was the key to PHP 3.0’s tremendous success. Other key features introduced in PHP 3.0 included object-oriented programming support and a far more powerful and consistent language syntax.
In June, 1998, with many new developers from around the world joining the effort, PHP 3.0 was announced by the new PHP Development Team as the official successor to PHP/FI 2.0. Active development of PHP/FI 2.0, which had all-but ceased as of November of the previous year, was now officially ended. After roughly nine months of open public testing, when the announcement of the official release of PHP 3.0 came, it was already installed on over 70,000 domains around the world, and was no longer limited to POSIX-compliant operating systems. A relatively small share of the domains reporting PHP as installed were hosted on servers running Windows 95, 98, and NT, and Macintosh. At its peak, PHP 3.0 was installed on approximately 10% of the web servers on the Internet.
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