Zencode

Everything you ever wanted to know about PHP

What is PHP and why do you need it?

If you’re reading this, it’s a pretty good be that you’re either an entrepreneur looking to build your business online, or you’re a business owner looking to make your website actually work for you. If you’ve been looking for more than 5 minutes, you’ve probably heard/read a lot of people talking about PHP development and how it is the best solution for custom web development. Well, let me walk you through some important points and present to you why PHP is the best solution for your business and why you need PHP developers to make your life easier.

What is PHP?

PHP stands for “PHP Hypertext Preprocessor”.. yes.. I know what you’re thinking, but geeks love recursive acronyms! Originally created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, PHP was originally known as ‘Personal Home Page’ toolkit which he wrote to maintain is website. Two fellow programmers, Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans took an interest in the project and PHP was reborn. Unlike many other scripting languages such as perl, internet and web capabilities weren’t added as an afterthought when the web became popular, PHP was built for the web. That makes PHP the perfect tool for custom web development.

Unlike HTML, PHP is a server-side scripting language which means that all the code is run from the server you are connecting to and not from your own PC. The relative ease-of-use of PHP means it’s perfect for use with databases such as mySQL, CMS (content management systems) and of course websites.

Since PHP is a full blown programming language ie functional and object-oriented it can be used for many intranet and internet applications, such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and SAAS (Software As A Service). But let’s keep talking about its use for web development.

Why is it perfect for custom applications?

As we said ealier, PHP is built with the web in mind there’s plenty of in-build functionality to make your application or website do anything you could possibly imagine. From dynamic image creation to automatically generated PDF’s, PHP has a vast toolkit that’s easily expandable by any quality developer. We often joke that if you have an internet enabled toaster, we’ll make your website cook your breakfast.

With more businesses taking not only their products but their entire product offering online the need for custom coding is on the rise. PHP is a powerful scripting language that can do simple things like generating forms and emailing the results to complex purposes such as order fulfillment, logistics management and accounting.

What is LAMP?

PHP Developers like us often call ourselves LAMP developers. While it can be said that we bring light to the darkest places of the internet (internal joke lol), it’s really an acronym for Linux (Operating System), Apache (Web Server) and MySQL (Database) and of course PHP.

Storing information online and then querying that data back through the browser is at the very core of what we do, and thanks to the almost daily advances with PHP, it has never been easier.

If it’s so easy, why do I need a PHP developer?

Did I say that PHP is easy to use? Well yes.. but I mean that in the relative sense. Unlike other web development platforms, PHP is incredibly easy for developers to use because of its innate capabilities. In fact, PHP is widely used in rapid application development (RAD) which means that applications that used to take months for developers to create can now be done much quicker. But unfortunately, to most of us, programming is still the voodoo that it is.

If you’re technically inclined, you could take the months (or years) to learn PHP, but it would make a lot more sense to hire a local PHP developer or outsource your PHP development work to us! Zencode are experts in PHP development and our team have years of experience in almost every conceivable web technology.

Think of it like your car.. you could spend 6 months tinkering with it, learning all there is to know about engines, or you could take it to someone who knows what they’re doing and get it done right first time. It may cost you more, but you have the piece of mind knowing that it’s done by professionals who have the experience and expertise to solve every problem that may arise!

If you’re interested in what we do, click the callback button below and we’ll be on the phone to you within the hour!