New to Arduino programming & PhP

Hello there, I apologize if this is a duplicate thread, but after researching for a while, I've not been able to find what I seek in the forums, so I'm here to request any possible help.

I'm a complete noob when it comes to Arduino programming, I literally began a week ago to challenge myself with a small school project, although I do have C/C++ knowledge.

And I have no knowledge of PHP scripting whatsoever.

I'm trying to achieve a successful data transfer between my NodeMCU esp8266 to a PHP script running on my website http://www..com/myPHPscript.php/

I basically want to check if there's a connection between the NodeMCU esp8266 and the PHP script and print out that status to a text file on my webpage: http://www..com/myTextFile.txt/

I've so far achieved the following, although I have no idea how to communicate with the PHP script from the esp8266 and I'm not sure if I'm approaching this correctly in my PHP script itself.

PHP script:

<?php
	$var1 = $_GET['NetworkStatus'];

	$fileContent = "Network Status: ".$var1.;

	$fileStatus = file_put_contents('myFile.txt',$fileContent,FILE_APPEND);

	if($fileStatus != false){
		echo "SUCCESS: Data written to file";
	}else{
		echo "FAIL: Could not write data to file";
	}
?>

C++ code:

#include "SoftwareSerial.h"
#include <WiFiClientSecure.h>
#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <HttpClient.h>

const char* ssid = "ssid";
const char* ssidpw = "password";

SoftwareSerial esp(2, 3);// RX, TX

String server = "www.webpage.com";
String uri = "/myPHPscript.php";

bool connected = false;

void setup() {
  esp.begin(9600);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  reset();
  connectWifi();
}

void reset() {
  esp.println("AT+RST");
  delay(1000);
 
  if(esp.find("OK")) {
    Serial.println("Module Reset");
  }
}

void connectWifi() 
{
  WiFi.begin(ssid, ssidpw);
  Serial.print("Connecting to: ");
  Serial.print(ssid);
  Serial.println();
  Serial.print("Connected to: ");
  Serial.print(ssid);
  Serial.println();
  Serial.print("Local IP address: ");
  Serial.print(WiFi.localIP());

  delay(4000);
}

void sendData(int netStat){
  HTTPClient http;
  //Build call string:
  String dataline = server + uri;
  dataline += "&var1=" + String(netStat, 1);

  bool httpResult = http.begin(dataline);
  if(!httpResult)
  {
    SerialDebug.println("Invalid HTTP request:");
    SerialDebug.println(dataline);
  }
  else
  {
    int httpCode = http.GET();
    if (httpCode > 0)
    { // Request has been made
      SerialDebug.printf("HTTP status: %d Message: ", httpCode);
      String payload = http.getString();
      SerialDebug.println(payload);
    }
    else
    { // Request could not be made
      SerialDebug.printf("HTTP request failed. Error: %s\r\n", http.errorToString(httpCode).c_str());
    }
  }
  http.end();
}

void checkConnection(){
  while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
    delay(500);
    Serial.print(".");
    connected = false;
  }

  connected = true;

  if (connected == true){
    sendData(1);
  }
}

void loop() {
  checkConnection();
}

Any help would be appreciated.