PHP is an open-source development language that is extremely popular and is supported by the online web development community. Web application with PHP for the development of dynamic database driven website for small business and indivisuals who want to make their web presence felt. The PHP web application development will help you to lead in industry as it is loaded with rich features and has a lower development cost.

The PHP web application has many advantages:

• It is especially design for the web.
• It is a robust and proven platform.
• Server side programming for building dynamic websites which are easy to manage and run.
• Since this is an open-source, it is constantly upgraded through community development.
• The web application with PHP has a high security record.
• It is also highly customizable, and it is easily adaptable to suit for all uses.
• It runs on Apache web server, which runs on Windows, Solaris, Linux, UNIX and other server platforms to provide a flexible application hosting.
• PHP web application development offers a quick solution that is fast, reliable, affordable and secured.
• The web application in PHP reduces the web application development costs further.

There are various PHP made applications and here I have noted some of the Web’s popular and powerful web based products developed in PHP.

• Content Management System (CMS):

• Joomla:

Joomla is a popular, an award-winning and an open source Content Management System (CMS) for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets. Joomla can be used to build very complex websites in minutes of time. It is the mother of CMS. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.

• Drupal:
  
  Drupal is a content management system (CMS) that makes use of modules to allow site administrators to organize and display content, customize appearance and manage routine tasks. Drupal is open-source software distributed under the GPL ("GNU General Public License") and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers.

• Mambo:
  
  Mambo CMS is a multi functional Open Source application for creating websites that can be used for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. It provides extensive options to create your own website without any design or script programing knowledge. Mambo is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable, and, best of all, it is free to use and to modify under its open source GNU/ General Public License.

• CakePHP:
  
  CakePHP is a free, open-source, rapid development framework inspired by Ruby on Rails framework. Cake PHP is distributed under MIT license. It's a foundational structure for programmers to create web applications. Its primary goal is to enable you to work in a structured and rapid manner–without loss of flexibility.

• CodeIgniter:
  
  CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications. CodeIgniter’s main goal is to allow user to develop lightning fast applications, without writing your code from zero, by providing a rich set of libraries for commonly needed tasks, as well as a simple interface and logical structure to access these libraries.

• PHP-Nuke:
  
  PHP-Nuke is a powerful Open Source portal application. It can be used as a weblog or as a content management system (CMS). It allows webmasters and editors to easily post news items, new content and comment existing articles. PHP-Nuke is one of the most popular tools for creating game clan websites.

• Social Engine:
  
  Social Engine is a PHP script that allows you to create an online social network. Social network service focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people. Right out of the box, your online social network will offer almost all of the features found on today's most popular social networking sites.

• TYPO3:
  
  TYPO3 is a free, feature rich, Content Management Framework as well as a Model–view–controller (MVC) Web Application Development framework built with PHP and running under many Unixes and Windows released under the GNU General Public License. It offers full flexibility and extendability while featuring an accomplished set of ready-made interfaces, functions and modules.

• XOOPS:
  
  XOOPS is an acronym of eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System. Though started as a portal system, XOOPS is in fact striving steadily on the track of Content Management System. It can serve as a web framework for use by small, medium and large sites. A lite XOOPS can be used as a personal weblog or journal also. It is easily expandable and makes a good base for community websites, portals, news sites and multi-purpose sites.

• Blog:

• WordPress:
  
  WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is the most widely used blogging software in the internet. WordPress is free, open source and priceless at the same time. It has many features including a large repository of plugins architecture and a templating system.

• Movabletype (MT):
  
  The Movable Type (MT) Open Source Project is a community effort, led by Six Apart, devoted to building and maintaining the open source version of Movable Type (MT), the award winning, ground breaking and revolutionary blogging platform that can help you create your own professional, personalized blog.

• Textpattern:
  
  Textpattern is an open source content management system unlike any other; it allows you to easily create, edit and publish content and make it beautiful in a professional, standards-compliant manner. While it is often listed among weblogging tools, its aim is to be a general-purpose content management system suitable for deployment in many contexts.

• b2evolution:
  
  b2evolution is a multi-lingual, multi-user, multi-blog publishing system which is free, open-source software (GPL), runs on virtually any webserver featuring. b2evolution includes all the features of traditional blog tools, photo management, versatile skins, multiple blogs, detailed user permissions, plugins etc. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License and is available without charge.

• Forum:

• phpBB:
  
  Since phpBB creation in 2000, its become the most widely used Open Source forum script currently on the web. It is free/open source, easy to install and administer and allows flexibility in terms of design and organization. It can be integrated with many Content Management Systems.

• vBulletin:
  
  vBulletin is one of the leaders on the forum platforms market today. With its feature-rich administrative panel it provides all the required tools to administrate and develop your forum website. With a dedicated development team and constantly growing community vBulletin is an ideal choice for any size of community and forum websites.

• SMF (Simple Machines Forum):
  
  Simple Machines Forum (SMF) is a free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes. SMF is designed to provide you with all the features you need from a bulletin board while having an absolute minimal impact on the resources of the server. SMF is the next generation of forum software, and best of all it is and will always remain completely free.

• E-Commerce:

• osCommerce:
  
  osCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution that offers a wide range of out-of-the-box features that allows online stores to be setup fairly quickly with ease, and is available for free as an Open Source based solution released under the GNU General Public License. It has a strong base with more than 5000 addons to be added to customize it further. Supports major payment gateways.

• CRE Loaded:
  
  CRE Loaded is much more than your average shopping cart. It’s the industry’s first downloadable ecommerce system that can easily make your store fully compliant with all Payment Card Industry (PCI) security rules. CRE Loaded, a cost-effective, feature-rich open source shopping cart that helps you become PCI Compliant while leaving you in control of your site.

• Pinnacle Cart:
  
  Pinnacle Cart is an extremely powerful commercial shopping cart and website builder application. Built from a marketing perspective with a focus on SEO and comes loaded with powerful features. Our PHP shopping cart software is designed to increase traffic, drive sales, and increase the average sale amount. Pinnacle Cart is the clear choice for serious merchants focused on rapidly and cost effectively deploying, managing and growing a successful web-based business.

• X-Cart:
  
  X-Cart is an open-source shopping cart that is based on PHP Smarty templates and MySQL database. Having researched and worked with several e-commerce solutions. X-Cart is a full-featured e-commerce solution that includes inventory control, order management and reporting and Powerful web-based administration.

• Zen Cart:
  
  Zen Cart truly is the art of e-commerce; a free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart system. The software is being developed by group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think e-commerce could be and should be done differently. This system encounters several languages and supports different types of currency, which are available for free under the GNU General Public License.