From php.net
" PHP is a tool that lets you create dynamic web pages. PHP-enabled web pages are treated just like regular HTML pages and you can create and edit them the same way you normally create regular HTML pages. "

Its like programming in java, perl, and c.

PHP is safe. I know in the past when I wrote a cgi script someone would have to look at the code to make sure there were no holes. PHP you don't have to worry about that.

Yes PHP and MySQL are free. :-)

--Mike