During Google I/O 2013,  GAE added most requested PHP language support to their popular Google’s Cloud Platform (App Engine).

But until now it was in private beta/limited preview and your cloud application has to be whitelisted in order to try out PHP language runtime.

Finally the wait is over. Starting today PHP runtime is launched in Preview mode which means it is available right away for any App Engine customer (no more required to be whitelisted).

So, Upload your PHP based app engine application and enjoy all the cool things app engine has to offer.

More details about the announcement is available here on the Google Cloud Platform official blog.

Key Changes to note

• Google App Engine plugin for WordPress: If you are planning to host wordpress on App Engine, they have released a wordpress plugin to cofigure and manage mail and cloud storage (since you can’t read/write files in app engine)
• Cloud Storage PHP API: Since App Engine doesn’t allow to read/write files, they have introduced a new PHP api to access cloud storage to achieve similar functionality
• Support for mbstring and mcrypt
• Support for Task Queues and Modules
• SDK, performance and stability improvements

So if you were one of those waiting for the PHP runtime on App Engine, upload, check it out and share your thoughts through Google+ comments.