PHP vs HTML
The Hypertext Markup Language or HTML is the oldest and most commonly used method of creating web pages. It is very simple and just within a few minutes, a coder can easily create a simple web page with text and a couple of images. You can do the same with PHP since its output gets processed by HTML and if you inserted the same HTML code you would also get the same result. This is due to the fact that the end product of PHP code, and what gets sent to the browser is in HTML. So the browser would get the same HTML code if you set it as the output of your PHP script, but if you want to take advantage of the advanced features that PHP offers you would need to spend a little bit more time.
Coding in HTML means that the pages you code would always appear the same depending on which browser you are using. PHP allows the coder to create an HTML page or section of it dynamically. As an example, if you want to create a site that would display all the letters of the alphabet individually in its own page, you would need to create a page for each letter if you are using HTML but you would only need one page with PHP. PHP is also capable of taking data and use or manipulate it to create the output that the user desires. A web page that can take two numbers, add it, and present the result to the user is very easy to do with PHP but not with HTML.
Because of the additional features of PHP, it needs to implement a proper structure in coding. Unlike HTML where anything you put in creates an output, PHP would not give you an output if something is wrong with your code. The learning curve of PHP is also much steeper compared to HTML. You would need a considerably longer time to learn PHP than in learning HTML though you would still need to learn HTML to learn PHP.
Summary:
1. HTML is a markup language while PHP is a scripting language
2. The output of PHP is usually in HTML code which the browser can then interpret
3. HTML codes are static and they are always the same every time they are opened while PHP files are dynamic and the output might not always be the same
4. HTML is very easy and forgiving of mistakes while PHP isn’t