What Are the Undisclosed Advantages of PHP for Web Development Projects?

If you landed on this article, you might be about to embrace the challenge of starting a new project. Choosing a reliable technology stack for your web application is one of the most important decisions at this point. It is not easy, as the extremely dynamic IT market offers dozens of possibilities. New technologies emerge daily, promising rapid development resulting in stable products in no time. This leaves customers in a situation where the price of opting for the wrong programming language or framework is too high as this might delay the launch of their products. In this piece, Andersen’s experts with years of experience in PHP development will provide an in-depth review of this technology, explaining what advantages turning to a professional PHP web development company will give your business.

What makes PHP ideal for web development?

PHP is one of the most popular programming languages for web development. It has been around since 1994 and has proven itself to be a truly sustainable and powerful tool. According to W3Techs, 77% of all websites are running on PHP.

Among them, there are lots of small- and medium-scale websites, as well as software giants, such as Facebook, Slack, NASA, Wikipedia, Spotify, Pfizer, SkillShare, and many more.

Let‘s consider why turning to PHP development services is a great choice for building a web application:

• The language is free and open-source. First things first, business is about making money, as well as making sure that you don’t run out of money before you deliver your product to its users. From this perspective, the open-source nature of the technology plays into your hands as you don’t pay for a license and have no other hidden costs.

• It allows for rapid development and maintenance. The technology is great for rapid prototyping as it doesn’t require complex and expensive infrastructure. As for the development speed, whenever PHP developers make changes in the code, they become immediately visible in the application when the page is reloaded. Thus, recompiling the source code, restarting the development environment, and performing other actions aren’t necessary.

• It provides for a wide selection of databases. The technology runs on all major platforms, whether it is Linux, macOS, or Windows. With it, you don’t need to worry about which web server or database you have. PHP is supported no matter what.

• It is scalable and efficient. At Andersen, skilled PHP specialists build minimum viable products at the best price to test our customers’ business ideas. However, this scalability doesn’t relate to MVPs alone. All PHP applications are just as scalable so that businesses can be sure they won’t hit the performance limit. Of course, this requires some knowledge and effort from PHP developers but it’s not something extraordinary, just a regular requirement for your developers or vendor.

• It offers enhanced security. The technology is a good choice security-wise as its multiple built-in security measures protect your solution from cyber attacks. With it, common security risks, such as data tampering, SQL injections, etc. are easily avoided.

Why is PHP a reliable technology?

Today many tools that were recently widespread have been forgotten, turning apps that use them into hard-to-support legacy software.

Andersen’s experts recommend you to consider the three following aspects when making up your mind about a tech foundation for your project:

• The technology of your choice should have been around for at least some time. Be skeptical and don’t trust every new “silver bullet” that promises that all your business needs will be easily met.

• It should be actively maintained. Beware of technology that hasn’t been updated for a while because it will mean that you can’t patch vulnerabilities in your system.

• Finally, it should have a large community behind it, otherwise, where would you find skilled developers?

When opting for PHP services, you can be sure that all the aforementioned conditions are met.

The technology has been around for a long time

Introduced in 1994, in its early days, the technology earned a reputation as nothing more than a hobby-level programming language due to its low learning curve and a great number of amateur developers. However, since that time, it has come a long way from a templating tool for building small home pages to a mature programming language capable of handling millions of requests per second.

It is actively maintained

PHP has been rapidly developing, especially over the last decade. Recently, the non-profit PHP Foundation was established, backed by such renowned companies as JetBrains, Automattic, Packagist Conductors, and Zend Technologies. They are supporting and promoting the technology by paying core PHP developers for working full-time on its evolution.

It has a large and helpful community

The technology boasts a large community. Packagist is its most frequently used package manager with about 1.5 billion downloads monthly and 50 billion downloads in total. Whatever problem PHP developers encounter, there is a high chance that they already have a solution. This means that PHP specialists can focus on solving real business problems instead of working out their own technical solutions, such as in the case of database communication, logging, etc. On top of that, the technology has popular frameworks, namely Laravel with over 4,000,000 downloads monthly, and Symfony with over 1,000,000 installs monthly. These mature frameworks have almost everything one needs to build an outstanding web application, e.g. database abstraction, routing, queue management, sending emails, encryption, validation, and more. There is also a dedicated community whose members focus their efforts on developing asynchronous PHP tools, such as Swoole, Amp, and ReactPHP, serving for the asynchronous work of web applications, as in the case of Node.js. The simplicity and popularity of the technology attract many unprofessional developers. Therefore, be careful when choosing a PHP web development company. Do a little investigation, look through their portfolio of past projects, and ask for references from their previous customers.

Final thoughts

To summarize, PHP is a robust, mature, and performant programming language with modern syntax and a sparkling community that will help you solve the majority of issues one can think of. If you still have doubts about whether the PHP ecosystem is the right choice for your project, feel free to contact Andersen’s experts for a professional consultation. We will be delighted to answer your questions and provide you with a project estimate.