10 ‘Must-Know’ Advantages of PHP

As an open source server side scripting language, Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) is widely used by web application developers across the globe. Many developers love using the scripting language to develop powerful, dynamic and interactive web applications within a short span of time. The huge popularity of the language can be estimated from its use in developing some of the renowned business and social networking websites. If you are planning to switch to the innovative and powerful language, it is time to understand some of its key advantages.

10 Features that Make PHP Score over Other Scripting Languages

• Easy to Learn and Use: Many novice web application developers find it easier to learn PHP without putting much effort. As the PHP syntax has similarities to the C and Java, the developers, who have prior experience in writing programs in these languages, can easily migrate to the powerful scripting language. At the same time, a developer without having any prior programming experience can also learn the language after knowing HTML. The clear and easy-to-understand nature of the language makes it popular among all types of developers.

• Easy to Embed in HTML: In comparison to conventional scripting languages, PHP can be embedded into HTML in an easier and hassle-free way. Many developers even prefer learning PHP after being familiar with HTML. The easy to embed feature also help developers to use the scripting language to convert the static websites into more dynamic and engaging websites without putting any extra effort.

• Open Source and Cross Platform: PHP is also popular as an open source and cross-platform scripting language. As it is open source, a developer can use the language without paying any fees. Further, a company can hire a developer having experience in writing C and Java program to start working on its PHP project. Also, as a cross-platform scripting language, PHP works perfectly on various operating systems including Windows, Mac, Linux and UNIX.

• Superior Level of Freedom: As PHP is not operating system specific, the developers enjoy a huge amount of freedom to write code using any of the commonly used text editor. Based on your choice, you can write the code using just Notepad, or some other editors Emacs, jEdit, Bluefish and Notebook++. The no restriction on coding allows developers to develop applications at their own pace and convenience.

• Several Frameworks: Each programmer looks for options to build powerful application without writing longer lines of code. The PHP developers can develop robust application within a very short timeframe using a variety of frameworks like Symfony, Slim, Silex, Zend and Aiki. You can choose any PHP framework based on the requirements of your application. Also, each framework allows you to avail a set of benefits including code reuse, better session management, and database access libraries.

• Smooth Integration with Systems: PHP is used widely by programmers to develop a variety of web applications and websites. According to a number of reports, over 30% of the web is powered by this powerful scripting language. There are also several systems like Memcache, Pusher and MongoDB that are integrated seamlessly with PHP. So you can use the language to develop powerful and dynamic web application for clients belonging to different regions and industries.

• Instant Support: Most developers need help, answers, or tips while writing codes. As PHP is open source, a developer has option to avail the assistance of a large community of developers. You can simply initiate a web search to access the online documentation and resources for PHP. At the same time, you also have option to avail specific solutions through online forums, blogs, social media and PDF. The support makes it easier for you to get instant assistance whenever you are stuck.

• High Scalability: Along with being interactive and dynamic, most web applications also need to be scalable. After deploying a website, the organization has to enhance hosting, databases and coding to boost its performance. The flexible and easy to understand feature of PHP, makes it more scalable. You can use the scripting language to add more servers and feature to increase your cluster size.

• Convenient Access to Third-Party Tools: Most web applications try to improve user experience by using popular tools and applications developed by third-party vendors. For instance, some business applications use Google maps to help users in identifying a location. Similarly, most ecommerce websites use a variety of third-party application like shopping cart software and payment processing gateways. You can use PHP to easily access all types of third-party tools in a fast and hassle-free way.

• PHP Hosting Services: An organization can further avail several advantages by hosting a PHP application through PHP hosting. Along with being inexpensive, the PHP hosting service further effective in boosting the efficiency and performance of application developed using the scripting language.

These features help immensely in PHP application development. In addition to these features, PHP also scores over other scripting language due to its user-friendly nature. Also, the PHP community constantly works on projects to keep the language updated and dynamic enough to meet the latest trends in web application development.

If you would like to outsource php development and would like to hire a php programmer for your needs, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

Is CodeIgniter is the Best Solution for a PHP Developer?

Each web application developer has option to choose from a wide variety of software frameworks. But a developer has to evaluate the pros and cons of each framework to decide the most effective and convenient option to develop powerful web applications. In comparison to conventional software frameworks, the PHP framework is much more popular among the application developers and resellers due to its simple and easy-to-use features.

Along with building applications without putting any extra time and effort, you can use the PHP framework features to easily debug, secure and deploy it using multiple platforms. As an efficient an open source web application development framework, CodeIgniter is widely used by developers to make lightweight and dynamic websites using PHP. Unlike other PHP frameworks, CodeIgniter is loosely based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) development pattern. Also, it is hugely popular due to its efficiency and speed in comparison to other frameworks. Needless to say, companies offering PHP development services are one of the most sought after ones for web application development.

What Makes CodeIgniter the Best Solution for Developing PHP Web Applications?

Model-View-Controller Architecture: Most developers prefer using MVC architecture as it can be configured and deployed easily. In addition to reducing the amount of time required for completing a project, the architecture further enables developers to keep the codes separated and clean. Most of the conventional frameworks require you to follow certain guidelines. But you can use CodeIgniter to work in a manner that you think is sensible, logical and suitable for your project.

Easy to Understand and Use: Many developers require additional training to migrate to a new application development framework. But one can learn, understand and use CodeIgniter without putting any extra effort. Also, this framework allows you to easily write new libraries, and modify the existing libraries. At the same time, you can further customize the framework to change its overall behavior. As CodeIgniter works seamlessly with both PHP 4 and PHP 5, you can easily make powerful application by availing the advantages of both environments.

A Set of Comprehensive Tools: CodeIgniter also comes with a number of built-in libraries including email, calendar, form validation, zip encoding, sessions, uploading and unit testing. Also, a developer can quickly write codes using default helpers available for a variety of elements like forms, strings, cookies, arrays, directories, and file handling. At the same time, you also have option to make your own libraries, and use the code developed by other members of the CodeIgniter community. The framework also allows you to upload files to a directory by skipping the required installation process.

In-built Features to Secure Your Web Application: Most application developers struggle to keep their web application secure and inaccessible. Some people even use expensive security tools to protect their website from hackers. When you use CodeIgniter, the framework allows you to choose and implement the amount and type of security needed by the individual applications. Along with automatically escaping SQL queries and unsetting all global variables, the framework also enables you to secure you application encrypting cookies and using a database to handle session data.

Easy to Manage Databases: Similar to other advanced software development frameworks, CodeIgniter also support a database abstraction layer nowadays. You can use the feature to easily create, insert, delete and update statements without writing raw SQL queries. Also, you can use the feature to connect your application to several databases including Oracle, Microsoft SQL, MySQL and SQLite. You also have options to use its database forge library to easily create new tables, remove old tables, and modify existing tables by adding or removing columns.

Comprehensive Documentation: CodeIgniter further scores over other web application development frameworks due to its comprehensive and quality documentation. As the framework is backed by EllisLab, a company passionate about making CodeIgniter the most popular PHP framework, the team invests a huge amount of time and efforts in optimizing the quality of documentation to target all types of users. The documentation also acts an impressive user guide for the developers migrating from other platforms. You can further read the documentation on a regular basis to enhance your knowledge and skills.

Support of Active User Community: Nowadays, most developer want assistance to resolve specific problems. Many programmers even use discussion forums to find solutions for a question or problem. One can always use the forum and wiki provided by CodeIgniter through its website. With over 57,000 registered users, these platforms make it easier for developers to get solutions within a few moments of time. You can simply get answers to your question without using the chat channels or group mailing list.

If you want to hire a PHP developer for your PHP web development needs, please contact us at Mindfire Solutions.

Increasing Popularity of PHP Development

PHP is a server-side scripting language that is compatible across major operating systems like Linux, Windows and so on. In the current scenario, programmers largely use PHP frameworks in order to deal with performance tuning issues, quickly and conveniently. Incorporating plug-ins and standard templates, PHP offers a robust architecture convenient for source code programming. A large number of frameworks are available to choose from, which can also be customized to suit particular coding needs. The most commonly used frameworks are Zend, Codeigniter, Smarty, Cake PHP and so on. An interesting aspect of PHP is that it offers ease of use for both newcomers and veteran programmers.

Advantages of using PHP frameworks

Query Generalization: Almost every web application is created with databases. Once you decide to incorporate anything dynamic, you need to search for words such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite. Creating queries implies a number of tables, foreign keys, joins, relations and so on. If there is some mistake at any point the application fails to function properly. This is not the case for PHP frameworks, where you just need to call up the function corresponding to a column or table and your work in done.

Code generation: A database is built in order to handle data. SQL INSERT statements are definitely not the most efficient means. PHP frameworks are able to produce the forms once you run the database code generator. The forms can then be used for entering data.

AJAX: Asynchronous JavaScript And XML (AJAX)) is amongst the most preferred functionality so far as web 2.0 sites are concerned. In case you are looking for a completely AJAX powered website, it takes a lot of time to compose the functions, objects and other things. PHP frameworks make this process convenient. To get the desired work done, all you need to do is compose the functions and call them appropriately.

Form Handling: In case you submit wrong information in a form, the database gives an error message and you begin debugging for what has gone wrong. Your problem takes considerable time to get resolved. By using a framework, the probability of errors is greatly reduced because it will check for the correctness of data. If there are some errors, debugging is much more convenient.

State management: Web and Web 2.0 is powered by the HTTP protocol. Many of the new technological executions are aimed at solving the HTTP protocol’s stateless manner. Here ‘state’ indicates a means for the website to recall what the user was doing. For instance, when you are logging in to a site, your ‘state’ should be remembered as ‘logged’. There are in fact a number of states that a web application is required to maintain, Using PHP frameworks, developers are empowered to control the application’s traits along with other aspects, making life much more convenient.

MVC architecture: The Model View Controller (MVC) architecture is used to build a number of websites, wherein the logic (model), behavior (controller) and presentation (view) are segregated. Almost all the PHP frameworks follow similar patterns and facilitate the creation of web applications that are much more in line with the MVC patterns. This makes development an easier process that when the developer tries to compose everything by himself.

Event Driven Programming: This is something which every developer would prefer to do. It revolves around taking actions during the occurrence of particular events. PHP development frameworks facilitate event driven programming in the sense that you are able to take a number of actions on events like button clicks or key presses. The developer is capable of focusing on the program logic instead of spending valuable time pondering about ways to route the request that is generated through the application by the button press.

PHP frameworks offer a comprehensive list of features allowing programmers to do much more easily and quickly. Each specific framework has its distinct functionality to facilitate the developer’s work. PHP development India teams can help you build projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide php web development services. If you would like to know more about our expert php developers, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Top 9 Amazing Facts about PHP

Business has been getting smarter over the years as a courtesy of fast technological evolution. The merits or demerits of technology tendencies can be judged by the kind of influence they have on enterprises. Trends that have no influence on the presentation of businesses in their domain go away, not ever to be glimpsed again. But the ones that help enterprises improve their profitability in more ways than proceed on to become the catalysts for change. Various software technologies have taken the business to a modernize way of representing in the web. Among the popular technologies PHP is probably the most known web development language right now. At least 20 million domains use PHP and it’s the language used on major sites such as Wikipedia and Facebook as well as in some of the world’s biggest open source projects like WordPress and Drupal.

We are well into 2013 and it has thrown up some advanced technology trends that have the potential to affect business and that too in a good way. Some amazing things happened just after the birth of PHP. It has met most of the business needs today from small to midsize and big size business.

Amazing Facts:

• PHP's abilities include outputting images, PDF files and even Flash movies generated on the fly.

• PHP can be used on all major operating systems, including Linux, Unix variants, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, RISC OS and probably others. PHP has also support for most of the web servers today.

• With PHP we can make a template with our own site. One can redesign the look of a site often, or just keep the content fresh on all the pages. By keeping all of the design code for the entire site in separate files and it can be accessible as PHP files to the same design. This means that if one makes a change, he only needs to update one file and all of your pages will change.

• If one wishes to add a Poll, PHP is the best which provides the GD library and thus help in displaying the results of the poll visually instead of just listing the results in the text.

• Hosting a Web Forum is easier with PHP now. It is a popular language to create a web forum. One can use a forum that already exists and modify it for your needs, or can write a new one from scratch. PHP will usually store forum information in a MySQL database. This allows large quantities of information to be stored and accessed quickly as required.

• PHP helps to create a page hit counter which can get the number of people visited on one's site. For a simple counter you don't even need to have a database, you can do it with just PHP using flat files.

• PHP even helps in getting information about last visited users. It can do this by storing a cookie in the user's browser. When they come back, you can read the cookie and remind them that the last time they visited was two weeks ago.

• PHP gives the ability for a company to have a dynamic presence on the web which allowed the company to conduct its business electronically, in essence having an electronic shop. Products can be advertised, sold and paid for all electronically. PHP websites can be exposed to hundreds of users around the world for almost no cost and with information being able to be changed almost instantly, the site can always be kept up to date with all the latest products to match with consumer demands.

• The attractiveness of PHP lies in its simplicity. It is very simple to understand and discover, especially for those with backgrounds in programming such as C, javascript and HTML. The language is alike to C and Perl so that anyone with a background in either C or Perl programming will feel comfortable using it.

Technology has advanced and many things are possible now with a few clicks. One can build customized websites in quicker time with PHP. With the power of technology today, businesses can understand their customers better and can initiate steps that help them build richer and more fulfilling relationships with their customers. The convergence of mobile computing, social networks and contextual services has meant that achieving customer intimacy is no longer an impossible task.

2013 will be the year for PHP which has many badly needed features which will see businesses making a perceptible shift towards implementing threat monitoring tools and data safety research teams, deployment of central management tools to enforce across the board security policies, data encryption, and more focus on cloud security. Newer versions being added with latest features getting more quality work in many countless projects, thus advancing PHP to the next level. PHP development India teams can help you build projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide PHP web development services. To know more about the expertise and certifications of our expert PHP developers, please visit us at Mindfire Solutions.

Tabulating the Stunning PHP development benefits

As years pass by developments in the information technology world, new trendy, agile programming languages keep flourishing. Today's growing trend makes your business online and stay updated with the latest information. In order to build any customized business on the web we need to take the help of the best programming language available and that is PHP. In this competitive world we need to stand out of the crowd and build a strong customer centric website which will fetch more people. PHP being open-source builds dynamic applications at quicker time, catering different kinds of business needs.

This language can support any database including MySQL and Oracle. It can run on any operating system. It has hundreds of base functions and thousands more via extensions. PHP development is the most demanding and happening technology liked by developers. PHP can be deployed on most web servers, many operating systems and platforms.

It can be used with many relational database management systems. Most web hosting providers support PHP for use by their clients. PHP now known for rapid application development and so designed many sophisticated frameworks like Symfony, CodeIgniter, Yii Framework, CakePHP and Zend Framework etc. It has 20 million Internet domains, every much used as the server-side scripting language running on 75% of all websites whose server-side programming language is known and is the most-used open source finest software within enterprises. 
 
When it comes to designing your best website that creates the right image of your business in the minds of your clients and customers, it is only right that you go for the best option and it is none other than PHP sufficing your every business demands. It's all the more worthy because of its enhanced features like its open source, user friendly, cost effective, less time consuming, high quality procedures and process and possibly has the best coding practice and making it best for all development needs.

Top Benefits of PHP:

• Sophisticated Inbuilt PHP Code:
  PHP is an open source language that comes with inbuilt PHP codes. It has its attributes quite similar to C and Pearl. This is the reason for which it makes the understanding of PHP codes a lot easier for the PHP amateurs. This in turn comes up as a boon in programming. A person regardless of the background to which he belongs and specializes can easily understand the PHP language and play with the codes during the web development. This language is compatible with all known platforms such as windows, Linux and Mac OS X. This is a huge benefit as the making of interactive web pages comes as really easy for a PHP developer. 
   
  
• Stupendous Online Execution and Performance:
  PHP is a crowd-pleasing successful language giving dynamic service and hence packed with features that help online shopping websites. The PHP/mysql eCommerce solution helps businesses boost their sales and business revenue. Almost all businesses use business portals for setting up an online store.. It gives a beneficial solution serving the classic web sites which have wonderful performance advancements. PHP development ensures a great deal of safety and security which is what each user wishes to have in the first place.
  
  
• Greatly In Vogue for the CMS Development:
  The Content Management Systems employing the PHP language are the extremely impressive applications in the power of web development services. PHP enables a Web Developer in formulating an extensive range of content management systems that employs distinct CMS applications like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and the likes. CMS facilitates the entrepreneur in mechanizing the business processes in the best possible way. As PHP is an open source technology that does not mandate any upfront licensing payment, the developers utilize this technology for formulating a wide range of web applications to meet all the user needs.
  

Added Benefits:

• Web services offered by PHP platform are designing online forms, richer and interactive dynamic websites, messaging portals, custom apps, management solutions, online calendar, business apps, social network, content management, eCommerce development, online store and website maintenance and many more. 
   
  
• It follows all features of 'object oriented programming' (OOPS) and thus it ensures that the data is encapsulated. Regulating authentication and controlling cookies becomes easier with that. And it works with the embedded scripts.
  

It is the most loved languages across the globe and has been supported by almost every hosting company. It was born on 1995 and since then had been growing with many demanding features with newer additions and newer versions. PHP development has numerous features compared to other programming languages .Net and Java. It is useful and the most hyped technology building complex application in a simple way. It has the largest community support and is an evergreen technology. And India provides top development options if you are looking at PHP development. PHP development India teams can help you build projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide PHP website development services. To know more about the expertise and certifications of our expert PHP developers, please visit us at Mindfire Solutions.