At the most basic level, PHP can do anything any other CGI program 
can do, such as collect form data, generate dynamic page content, 
or send and receive cookies.

PHP also has support for talking to other services using protocols
such as IMAP, SNMP, NNTP, POP3, or even HTTP. You can also open 
raw network sockets and interact using other protocols.

This package installs a stand-alone binary which can be used for
command-line scripts, as well as an Apache module.

By default this port uses the suhosin patch.
The suhosin patch adds security hardening features to PHP
to protect your servers on the one hand against a number of
well known problems in PHP applications and on the other hand
against potential unknown vulnerabilities within those
applications or the PHP core itself.
http://www.hardened-php.net/suhosin/index.html