PHP to Develop an E-Commerce Site - Should We Go Ahead or Not?

The right ecommerce site can make a huge difference to any business. In addition to increasing online sales and revenues, the website will further help the business in retaining valuable customers. That is why; enterprises often find it daunting to choose the right platform to gauge their business online. If you are exploring options to build your ecommerce website, it is a great idea to choose PHP.

Like other programming languages, PHP is also effective in optimizing your website’s look, feel and performance. But the technology allows you complete the project rapidly by availing navigational tools, content management systems, libraries and extensions. At the same time, you also have option to choose from widely used PHP ecommerce frameworks like Magento, X-Cart, osCommerce and Zen Cart to create and run your online store without putting any extra time and effort.

Why Use PHP Frameworks to Develop an E-Commerce Site

Add Unlimited Items and Catalogs: Once you create the ecommerce site, it has to be updated frequently to include new products and catalogs. The PHP frameworks make it easier for you to add as many catalogs you want without any hassle. Thus, the existing product list can be updated frequently to complement the expansion or growth of your online store.

Add Many Manufacturers and Brands: There are also chances that your web store has to deal with products launched by different manufacturers or under different brands. So the website needs to be updated to showcase all these brands. The widely used PHP frameworks allow you to add new manufacturers and brands without any restriction.

Support for Multiple Currencies: The web store allows you to sell products to customers residing in different countries and regions. So you have to look for a payment system that supports multiple currencies. In addition to allowing customers to see the price of a product in a specific currency, the website must allow them to pay in their own currency. The PHP frameworks enable you to add multiple currencies to the online shop. As the customers have option to pay without any hassle, the website will help in increasing your online sales.

Integrate Major Payment Gateway: To optimize the performance of your online store, you have to use one of the most widely used and popular payment gateways and online payment processor. PHP frameworks make it easier to integrate third-party applications to the website. Thus, you can always deliver richer user experience by incorporating a widely used payment gateways and online payment processing system.

Administrator Panel: An ecommerce website also needs to be updated frequently to manage both product listing and prices. So you have to explore ways to administer the web store without deploying a fulltime website admin. The PHP frameworks make it easier for you to manage the product listing and prices through an easy-to-use admin panel. The admin panel can be further customized by the developer according to the way you want to manage the ecommerce website.

Option to Post Customer Reviews: You can always enhance the credibility and reputation of your web store by allowing customers to post reviews and comments. The product reviews and ratings can be displayed on your website to gain the trust of new customers. The PHP frameworks make it easier for you to allow customers to post reviews, and showcase the reviews to new customers to gain their trust.

PHP Online Forum: While creating an ecommerce site with PHP, a developer can avail assistance from several PHP web development forums. As the technology is used widely to create ecommerce portals, the developer can avail relevant help to complete the project rapidly. At the same time, the website administrators can use PHP scripts to monitor the activities of website visitors, and take relevant action to convert them into customers.

Unlike other technologies, PHP is both open source and free. Further, you have option to create the ecommerce portal by using a number of open source PHP frameworks. Thus, PHP will further make it easier for your business to launch and run a web store without investing a lot of money.

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PHP vs. Other Open Source Technologies - Which is better?

As a powerful server-side scripting language, PHP is widely used by developers across the world to build robust and secure web applications. Many developers even use PHP as a general –purpose programming language to develop conventional software applications rapidly. Each web programmer has option to choose from a variety of open source server-side scripting languages including Ruby and Python. But each of these web programming languages has its own shortcomings. That is why; most web developers opt for PHP to overcome the limitations of other open source technologies.

Using PHP to Overcome the Shortcomings of Other Open Source Technologies

Easy to Learn

Unlike other open source technologies, PHP is simple and easy-to-learn. So a programmer can learn the language, and start using it without putting any extra time and effort. As PHP is a syntax based language, any developer familiar in C and Perl can easily master the language. He can further use the logical syntax and command function to describe a particular task without writing any lengthy code. Also, PHP code can be embedded seamlessly in the HTML source code.

Supports Major Platforms, Web Servers and Databases

Despite being open source, PHP can run on a variety of operating systems like Widows, UNIX, Mac OS and Linux. It also supports major web servers like Microsoft IIS, Apache, iPlanet server, Personal Webserver and Netscape. The PHP developer can further integrate the application will some of the widely used databases including MySQL, SQLite, dBase, FrontBase, InterBase, ODBC and IBM DB2. Thus, the PHP application can be integrated seamlessly with other technologies, while reusing the existing software components.

Short Time to Market

As a highly scalable technology, PHP makes it easier for programmers to quickly write the code, and create reliable application that can effectively serve multiple web pages. Further, the fast data processing feature makes it easier for developer to build data-driven web applications. The complex applications can also be implemented within a shorter span of time. Thus, an enterprise can always opt for PHP to beat competition by reducing the time to market. Also, the features will help businesses in curtailing the overall cost of the web application development project.

Effective in Designing High-Traffic Websites

Since its inception, PHP has been used to create a wide variety of websites and internet applications. The technology is also being used by some of the very widely visited websites like Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia. PHP is also used to build some of the widely used content management systems (CMSs). As PHP is a server side scripting language, it can be used effectively as an alternative for other CGI programs. The PHP frameworks further make it easier for developers to build and maintain the widely visited websites without putting any extra effort.

Enhanced Flexibility

In comparison to other programming languages, PHP is considered to be more flexible. The developer can avail the flexibility to create and update web applications without putting any extra effort. The frequent changes in use choices make the features and functionality of the application change throughout the lifetime of the project. As PHP allows developers to incorporate changes even after the commencing the development, the web application launch schedule remains unaffected.

Option to Use PHP Frameworks

A developer can further save time by using PHP frameworks. He also has option to choose from several open source and commercial frameworks including CakePHP, Symfony, Yii, CodeIgniter and Zend. In addition to saving developers’ time, the frameworks further make it easier to reuse the code, access API services and create plugins. As these frameworks follow design patterns, the programmers can further keep their code clean and organized. Some of these frameworks even come with SEO capabilities that make it easier for businesses to promote their web applications through major online search engines.

The PHP group has already shared the timeline for the release of upcoming versions of PHP. So a developer can always use the most recent version of the server-side scripting language to take advantages on new features and enhanced capabilities. You can get in touch with a php application development company who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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Is Cake PHP the need of the hour?

Presently, one of the most demanded frameworks is CakePHP that offers integrated web solutions for PHP development environment. This framework is being extensively used by both big as well as small web development companies. It is thus immensely popular as well as full of advantages which have prompted so many people to adopt it. The framework has useful features for developers as well as clients. Some of the benefits are given here that illustrate why CakePHP has become the need of the hour.

ORM- The programming technique called Object Relational Mapping is used for conversion of data between object-oriented programming languages and incompatible type systems located in databases. This essentially means that every class represents a table and relations can be defined in the classes between other tables along with defining validation and predefining particular callbacks especially for the table. The classes as well as table can be managed in an easier way.

MVCEnvironment- The framework is a three-tier architecture that is properly defined and aids developers to work better. The patterns make separating logic and presentation very easy which further helps in case of large sites as well as applications. With the logic kept separate page presentation is easily performed.

Supports diverse technologies- The huge technical area of web development involves several available technologies so that solutions can be availed. In fact so many available technologies make it difficult for the developers to integrate several technologies with each other. Various programming languages and diverse technologies are supported by it. In fact, it may be easily extended with helpers, components, plug-ins as well as behaviours. This is again very important since partially reusable codes are created which may be used later on in some other project as well. The helpers, components, plug-ins as well as behaviours can be placed with special functionality so that the projects may be modularized.

Directorystructure- The framework has a comprehensive directory structure which makes it really easy to locate whatever the developers want. This task can be done without even touching any unnecessary configuration files. The task of web development becomes quite easy, ultimately leading to faster completion of development solution.

Properclassinheritance- Each project consists of two primary folders- one is core lib/cake/ which works as if peep show while the second is application specific one/app/. The inheritance of CakePHP is quite understandable as well as sensible. Empty AppController class can be extended by every Application specific controller; some extra logic may be extended or some core functions may be predefined so that the action is exactly like the one needed.

Debuggingandtestingtools- There are several high-quality debugging as well as testing tools. In fact tests can be created to check the various critical points of an application. There are both custom tests as well as core tests which become really handy while building large applications.

Zeroconfigurations- Configuration problems are now a thing of the past with CakePHP since the framework works without any configurations. The auto removed settings and features enable developers to work without having to configure additional settings except from features of database connection.

Secureframework- The framework falls in the category of one of the most secure as well as robust web solutions. High quality web solutions can be had and that too securely. The future products will also get the proper authorization.

Build in validation- This feature enables developers to attach several advanced validation rules to a single field.

These are only a few of the benefits offered by Cake PHP. This is actually a very useful framework, making it a great option for businesses as well as developers. Compelling and unique applications can be developed so that companies can establish a better as well as stronger web presence. Thus, Cake PHP needs a complete understanding so that better advantage can be taken of the capabilities offered. You can get in touch with a php development company who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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How effective is it to develop mobile app using PHP?

The last decade has seen the world of technology undergoing a huge revolution. There has been development of several new technologies such as responsive websites, dynamic websites, ecommerce websites, mobile websites, web applications and now mobile applications. The tremendous increase in the amount of smartphone usage has made it imperative for companies to tap into this field. Businesses can now provide services as well as products to the customers instantly, on the go. PHP is a famous open source technology and developing the applications in it, makes them safe as well as reliable; not only that, they are extremely cost-effective as well.

Level of effectiveness

Portable as well as easy to develop- The best reason for most web developers to use this software is the fact how easy it is to develop apps by using it. You do not need to learn any new language; in fact the requirement for new tools is also very limited and optional. The platform is combined out of highly portable technologies which are available on both desktops as well as mobile devices.

Deployment- Deployment is absolutely unequalled; you simply have to put the files up on web server which can be done by anybody; there are plenty of options to do that as well. In general app stores, the situation is quite different. There is need to gain approvals, registrations have to be made and in some countries the application’s content may be censored. But these facts are not applicable for applications built through this language. All you need to do is share the URL of the application so that it can be accessed by people soon after its release.

Naturally multi-device- A huge advantage of using PHP for any kind of app development is the fact that it is able to target device varieties better. You can easily target a vast variety of devices with various screen sizes and resolutions, colour depths, font, input methods, operating systems, etc.

Easy maintenance- The maintenance after deployment is actually quite easy. Users do not have to wait for the rolling out of upgrades for all users to be reached; users can immediately take advantage of the bug fixes. This helps cripple out critical bugs along with security issues.

Cost effective- The open source nature of PHP makes it extremely cost effective to be used. In fact, a huge developer community updates the language from across the globe. Thus all the components can be used as well as distributed for free. The overall development cost is reduced naturally. On top of that, despite the free nature, the development’s quality is not compromised.

Security- The core of the language is solid with an extremely secure architecture. Thus when this framework is used for the development of applications, the end result turns out to be extremely safe, stable as well as secure by itself. Their nature is also really robust and they seldom malfunction or crash.

Steps to build mobile applications by using PHP

1. The first step is using phpMyAdmin to create MySQL Database on a machine.
2. Now new PHP and Flex Mobile project haves to be created by using the respective wizards. The project files must be stored locally.
3. Now the Mobile Test Drive Assets have to be downloaded.
4. TextInput must be added to the ActionBar’s Title Area.
5. Now Buttons have to be added to the ActionBar’s Action Area.
6. Fine tune the entire layout by using Spacer Components.
7. Now the content area of the View should be added with a List Control.
8. The Component Attributes of MXML have to be changed.
9. Now the resources of your PHP application development project must be created.
10. Develop the service.
11. A PHPUnit Test must be run on the service.
12. Now introspect and then bind.
13. API of the component must be viewed.
14. The Mobile Application can be previewed through Desktop Emulator.
15. The final as well as very important step is the debugging of the application.

PHP has a lot of power that should make you get excited to use it. Just a few prerequisites along with basic knowledge can help you harness the huge amount of benefits that are offered by the feature-rich language.

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Is PHP a better choice for larger & complex projects?

Over the last few years, PHP has turned out to be one of the most popular scripting languages and its popularity seems to increase all the time. The principle reason behind its popularity is the fact the language is extremely easy to be picked up and can be used to design as well as develop customized web pages. This ideally implies that by opting for PHP as the principle implementation language, a user can have the liberty of building a web page that is dynamic, rather quickly as well as easily.

However, when it comes to dealing with larger projects, it is highly imperative to take certain measures to make PHP development an effective tool for larger as well as more complex projects.

The measure includes:

• Separating the business logic from the presentation itself

• Taking the help of individual developer(s) instead of a development team

• Taking Special care of those areas where the initial simplicity of PHP can make things too much complicated for you

Though PHP at times can create a lot of issues in the case of bigger projects, taking special care in these three aspects can make the scripting language a handy one.

Separating the business logic from the presentation itself

The websites that are designed nowadays are scripted in such a way their reaction time is minimal when it comes to meeting the changing demands of the market. From the point of view of the developers, this means that they need to alter the contents of the website along with its looks in a seamless way and with minimal effort. This can be done by separating the presentation (which means the site's aesthetic look) from the very logic of the business (which means the activity of the site or what the site is expected to do).

This type of separation will provide an opportunity of engaging two separate development teams – one team, taking up the responsibility of setting up the business logic and the other team, taking up the responsibility of designing. As very few programmers are equally competent in visual designing, this clearly gives a significant edge over the competitors. This is more apparent in case of development of bigger as well as more complex projects with the help of PHP.

Now, let us see the other ways in which any disadvantage that PHP carries with it, can be negated. The principle objective of PHP is combining the HTML that will create the main get up or the look of the site along with the logic that is used to carry out the business. The codes develop the contents of the site, that can easily be derived from a database. Even developers who are not that experienced find this easy to deal with and this makes PHP such an easy language to understand. This makes all the difference even during bigger or more complex projects.

To make sure you can make the most of PHP during development of larger and more complex project, the following checklists should be maintained.

• The amount of control that needs to be there over deployment platform.

• The number of people who will be working on the particular site – at present as well as in the future.

• The size of the site needs to be ascertained in advance and the number of pages needs to be determined alongwith.

• The life cycle of the page or in other words, how long the page is expected to last? This will determine the extent of changes that the page will undergo and depending upon that, the users can extend the PHP with a suitable templating system.

• Also, take into account the extent of experience that the developers have, along with the complexity of the site as that will be determining the changes that the site will undergo.

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Best Frameworks in PHP for ERP Applications

The complex nature of business processes has made it a daunting challenge for developers to build robust ERP application rapidly. With more and more enterprises outsourcing business processes, the ERP application needs to consider the requirements of several distributed teams. But there are a number of frameworks in PHP that allows developers to build a variety of ERP application rapidly. Most of these frameworks support the model-view-controller (MVC) approach, while allowing programmers to optimize the app’s performance by structuring their code. If you are planning to build a robust ERP application rapidly, it is a good idea to know some of the best PHP frameworks that will complement your project requirements.

Five of the Best PHP Frameworks for ERP Applications

1) CodeIgniter

The robust framework comes with a set of advanced features that make it easier for programmers to rapidly build ERP applications. In addition to facilitating fast page loads, CodeIgniter further allows developers to avail brilliant documentation and assistance from a large community. The non-strict structural requirements, at the same time, make the PHP framework cost-efficient. You can learn and use CodeIgniter without putting any extra time and effort. Also, the online community forums and chat services will help you in clarifying your doubts and questions.

2) Zend

As the framework developed by makers of the PHP, Zend is used widely to build ERP and business applications. It also allows users to access loads of plugins and advanced features, along with optional free downloads. Unlike other PHP frameworks, Zend enables you to access a custom server. You can use the custom server to check the look, feel and performance of the application across multiple platforms, without additional configurations. However, Zend will require you to invest some funds initially. Also, you have to incur additional expenses to buy add ons from Zend. If you are ready to spend some money, Zend will help you in building robust and customized ERP applications quickly.

3) Yii

Yii is considered to be one of the most effective frameworks to develop social and business applications. It allows you to optimize the performance of the ERP application by availing features like SQL injection, input validation and several security tasks. The framework can further save your time by generating the base code automatically. Also, Yii, at present, is the fasted loading PHP framework in the market. However, you have to invest both time and efforts to learn the ins and outs of Yii. The lack of books and tutorials will further require you to avail the assistance of other PHP developers.

4) FuelPHP

FuelPHP comes with features found in major PHP frameworks. But it combines these features into an approach that is both fresh and distinct. You also have option to refer to active comprehensive and updated Fuel documentation, along with getting help from a large community. The PHP framework is further updated frequently to support new features. Like CodeIgniter, FuelPHP can also be learned without putting any extra time and effort. But you will find the code to be less compact in comparison to CodeIgniter. The framework allows you to optimize the ERP application’s performance by implementing your creative and innovative ideas.

5) Symfony

In comparison to other MVC frameworks, Symfony is much more customizable. You also have option to improve the ERP application’s performance by using different software components that are being used by the project already. Many developers also considered Symfony to be the complete framework to build ERP and business applications. You have option to determine the security level of the application simply by configuring the two writing folders required by Symfony.

While developing an ERP application, each PHP developer has option to choose from several frameworks. So you must evaluate different PHP frameworks according to the specific requirements of your project. However, you also need to keep track of the new and innovative frameworks being launched at frequent intervals. Expert php web development India teams can help you build projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

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Why PHP 6 for Enterprise Level Web Development?

The development as well as evolution of languages is but very natural and PHP 6 is the representation of the language's development as well as growth. PHP 4 or PHP 5 had nothing fundamentally wrong but with PHP 6 some issues that were plaguing the language have been sorted, making the language a lot more user-friendly. With respect to many aspects this version has been like cleanup release. The improved language now features a robustness and ease of use that draws the programmers to it, making it ideal for web development at the enterprise level. Some of the features that make it so functional are given below:

Unicode support- While creating websites, character encoding is something that we hardly think about. The only decision that has to be taken is the way to tell user agent about the encoding used and even this is quite simple enough to do. But while building applications, character encoding becomes a problem and here the Unicode support helps a lot. This enables the language to encode and decode automatically the output and input of script which ensures that both user agent along with database receives the encoding needed but without any additional functions for encoding conversion.

Cleaning up the act- In this version a lot of bugs as well as errors have been taken care of which had previously resulted in problems like security holes and slow scripts. Functions like safe_mode, register_globals and magic_quotes have been take care of. In PHP 6, these features have disappeared; many programmers have breathed a sigh of relief with this. Super globals had some long versions such as $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS and register_long_arrays which have disappeared. The mode dealing with PHP 5 classes' backwards compatibility zend.ze1_compatibility_mode has been taken care of as well.

OO functionality- OO model has been improved a lot which can be said to be this version's biggest improvement. The previous version had improved tremendously and this version just carries this improvement further forward with the addition of namespaces. Those familiar with C++ or XML namespaces have ideas regarding the working of namespaces. These actually provide a method to avoid name collisions among classes and functions but without the use of prefixes for the naming. Objects, variables or functions are grouped under a specific name by this so that class names can be used by developers without any problems despite the fact that the particular name may be used by somebody else multiple times.

Alternative PHP Cache- An application's performance can be improved immensely through caching which speaks for the huge demand for excellent opcode cache in PHP default distribution. With demand there are people to cater to it, resulting in APC or Alternative PHP Cache. This was available already sometime back but this extension has now been included in the core for default caching framework.

Further miscellaneous changes to extensions- Basically PHP can be said to be an aggregation of extensions and whatever form we have; in fact, it consists of all of that put together. These extensions however, change and with that the collection does as well. PHP 6 will follow in the footsteps of PHP 5.1, boasting of a great combination of XML Writer extension for writing of XML files and XML Reader enabled in its core distribution. This will allow people to work easily with XML files.

Dismissal of the library of ereg regular expressions is another change carried on in core distribution. Instead this has been made an extension. The previous functionality of ereg lied in being PCRE's competitor but due to some problems it has been removed from core, making it an extension instead.

Some other new changes have been introduced to the language. Basically huge feature updates have not been followed through but majorly a lot of glitches have been eradicated which has made this language an easy tool to work with for most application as well as website developers. In fact, websites of some of the industry giants are run on PHP, making it all the more an attractive platform for development. You can hire developers from top php application development companies in India who can help you build projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide php web development services. If you would like to discuss with a certified php developer from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.