PHP is a widely-used open source scripting language that can be used to create dynamic web pages. PHP code is executed on the server and generates HTML that is sent to the browser. PHP files have a .php extension and can contain HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP code. PHP can connect to databases, collect form data, generate dynamic content, and more. It runs on many platforms and is compatible with popular web servers. Many large sites like Facebook use PHP due to its capabilities and flexibility.