PHP - A Developers' Best Accomplice

PHP Developer – A great and engaging Career

            PHP is one of the most popular scripting languages in use on the Internet today. It is an open source server-side scripting language designed for Web development to produce dynamic Web pages. It is a language that is specifically designed for web programming with built-in integration with the most popular open source databases. Being the most reliable, economical, fast and secure website development tool so far, PHP is ruling the genre. Many blogg-systems and e-shopping-platforms uses PHP world wide. PHP is an interpreted language and uses no third party accelerators to improve on the performance.

            Nowadays, many companies use Content Management Systems(CMS – a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages to create and manage website content with relative ease). Many powerful CMSs are powered by PHP like Joomla,Wordpress,Drupal etc. 

Who/Where Use PHP?

·         Social Network Websites like Facebook written in PHP

·         Powerful frameworks such as Zend,CodeIgniter,CakePHP,Zend,Yii are written in PHP

·         Popular Content Management Systems(CMS) such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal written in PHP

·         Forum softwares such as Vbulletin, oscommerce, pMachine,phpBB are all primarily written using PHP

·         Shopping carts like Magento,Zencart,Opencart,Oscommerce are written in PHP.

·         Wikipedia - an online free-content encyclopedia that you can edit and contribute to is written in PHP

·         Business applications

·         CRM development

·         Classified ads

·         Website maintenance

·         Auction

·         Web portals

·         Dynamic websites

·         Communities

·         Ecommerce

·         Real estate development

·         Shopping carts

·         Online marketplaces

·         Content management

·         Online storage

·         Helpdesk

·         Newsletter

·       Online accounting software

Why PHP is so popular the Web Market?

 1.  Easy to use & learn

·         PHP is a straight forward language and easy to learn .  Despite its simplicity, PHP is a robust coding platform

·         PHP Community is very vast. One can easily get solutions of their problem over the Internet

·         PHP doesn't need to be compiled,   just to write the script and then upload it to the server and then update the browser.

·          

 2.  Efficient and versatile

·         PHP is easy as well as comprehensive enough to achieve virtually any complexity faced in web development.

·         PHP can handle heavy traffic websites on a daily basis during peak hours, which makes it an ideal candidate as a scripting language.

 3.  It’s Open Source

·         Anyone can access and edit the source code, and contribute to future development. This is one of the reasons there are so many plug-in programs available already written in the language.

·         PHP doesn't need to be compiled, so it's just to write the script and then upload it to the server and then update the browser.

4.     Free hosting

·         There are no licensing fees to pay to install PHP, meaning the cost of running a server is kept down.

·         PHP also runs on Linux and Unix, a Web hosting server can be set up with no software costs.

5.   Integrated database support

·         PHP has built-in support for the popular databases like e.g. MySQL, that means no additional drivers needs to be installed, just to use the mysql-functions.

·         It can be connected to any other databases like Oracle,SQL Server or Access.But PHP+MySQL is cross platform. So Most Coders use MySQL.

6. Secured

·         PHP is very much secured and the website,PHP.net is keep releasing the latest version and updates for the PHP for latest security updates and bugs being removed.

Why Should Use a PHP Framework

If you look at PHP Job listings, you will often see “MVC Framework Experience” as one of their requirements. It is becoming one of those must-have skill sets for web developers.

Some of the top reasons are:

·         MVC Pattern

·         Community Support

·         Job Opportunities

·         Better Code and File Organization

·         Less Code & Faster Development

·         in Built Utilities & Libraries

·         Suitable for Teamwork

·         Security

Why Zend Framework?

·         All components are fully object-oriented

·         Open source web development Framework

·         Cost-effective solutions

·         Easy maintenance and deployment

·         Completely Object Oriented

·         Rich library, database and tools

·         Future expansion scopes

Why Use a CMS

The graph showcases the popularity of various CMSs'. 

A system that allows users to post content on a site is basically a CMS. When you are posting a comment on Twitter or writing on the Wall of Facebook you are using a kind of CMS.

 With a CMS in place there is no need to make changes in server side each time you change the content. This has transformed the way full website designing was planned few years ago.

Why Joomla

Joomla! is a powerful yet easy to use open source content management system to build websites. It enables developers to build complex web sites and on line applications. It is built upon PHP and MySQL. Some of the features that makes Joomla popular are:

·         Easily enables developers to build complex web sites and online applications. It is built upon PHP and MySQL, is free, and can be used to create: customization

·         Easy To Deploy

·         Mature Platform

·         Popularity

·         Active Support

·         No licence costs

                                                                                                                                         Why WordPress

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and a content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by over 16.7% of top 1 million websites and as of August 2011 manages 22% of all new websites.WordPress is currently the most popular blogging system in use. The features of Wordpress are :

·         Very quick installation and configuration

·         Better and Efficient Code

·         It is be used as an excellent Blogging system as well as a CMS

·         Developer-friendly

·         Upgrading WordPress is a breeze

·         Better community support & plugins

The blog was aimed to highlight the best aspects of PHP, a great technology which has given the world of Web Development a great deal of enthusiasm as well as the greater aspects of the technology which makes this particular technology a great attraction for the young IT aspirants.