There are many ways of executing a PHP script. For example you might run it directly from a command line:

php <name_of_the_script>

Other option, readily available for tesing since PHP 5.4, is to spin up the internal PHP server and see the result in a browser:

php -S localhost:3000

If you create a simple page with the function php_sapi_name you will be able to check out the interface that is being used to run the script.

Https has become a standard for websites and there’s no excuse not to have it enabled on the website, especially that it’s now possible for free.

Making your website more secure with a free Let’s Encrypt certificate is very easy with Certbot.

The prerequisites are to have SSH access to your server that is already online and serving the site over http. In the example I’m setting up the certificates with Apache.