Could someone explain var_dump to me in a simple way please thank you

it displays value and data type for what is contained in a variable. see http://php.net/manual/en/function.var-dump.php for the official explanation and examples. The examples are pretty helpful and cover a few different variable types.

I don't think it's something you'd use in a real live website. It's just something you use when you want to see what value you have (in a debugging context). To output a value normally, you'd use echo or print. However, sometimes you just want a quick look at a variable when you're putting a page together, or want more precise information. (some different values may produce the same output using echo, making it unclear as to the precise contents of a variable).