PHP started to become known as what it is today when the parser was rewritten by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans to form PHP Version 3. The rewrite started in 1997, two years after the first public release. Even with the rewrite, the PHP team first released PHP/FI Version 2 on November 1st, 1997. Months later, on June 6th, 1998, PHP Version 3 was officially released to the public.

As if the rewrite of the PHP parser to Version 3 wasn't enough; Zeez Surasky and Andi Gutmans then began to work on the Zend Engine in 1999, which was another rewrite of PHP's core. The first official release of the new rewrite was PHP Version 4.0, with Zend Engine 1.0 on May 22nd, 2000.

PHP started in the year 1994 and originally stood for personal home page. Initially, it was a set of CGI binaries written in the C programming language, by Rasmus Lerdorf.

Lerdorf created PHP to replace Perl (another programming language) scripts he was using to maintain his website. He would use PHP for tracking visitors, measuring traffic, and putting his resume online.