PHP development outsourcing to India - Few Reasons

PHP A perfect web technology: Website development is becoming a passion for everyone. The numbers of websites being developed in different languages are getting increased in an exponential rate. Among those, PHP is at the top of the list. This is because of its open source nature and easy to learn approach. Unlike languages like JSP and ASP, PHP doesn’t have frontend and backend separate pages for a web application. This makes it more popular among the web developers in the industry. You can develop any type of web application using PHP in less time than in any other language. Hence clients are demanding to develop their web application in PHP; because they want their web application to be developed quickly and at an affordable cost. To make the things even better you can also opt for outsourcing your PHP web development process to the world’s best destination i.e., India in order to gain some added advantages for your project.

Why do customers prefer Zend certified PHP programmers?

The Zend PHP Certification is a widely recognized program that measures the expertise of the PHP professionals. The employers use this certification to evaluate their prospective employees. This certification is offered by the company that includes several areas required to develop applications. The reason why customers are increasingly opting for Zend certified PHP programmers is that every company is looking forward for maximum returns at low costs. In addition the competition is rising as well. Under such circumstances the Zend.

List of PHP file uploader and downloader scripts

PHP is an open source scripting language that is widely used for web development. There are several tasks involved in creating a full-fledged website. Tools of various sorts are used to achieve this end. The PHP uploader and downloader scripts are such tools which are used to by the developers to upload videos, images, audios and a particular file format to the website that is being built with the PHP framework. This is a huge library with numerous such scripts.

PHPStorm - Is It The Best IDE that Programmers Use?

Let us start with the topic – what is PHPStorm? PHPStorm or JetBrains PHPStorm can be defined as a commercial as well as cross platform IDE for PHP that is built on the IntelliJ IDEA platform of JetBrains. It plays the role of an editor for PHP, HTML as well as JavaScript that come along with on-the-fly analysis of codes, prevention of errors as well as automated refactorings for Javascript along with PHP codes.

Now let us discuss why PHPStorm is regarded as the best IDE that is used by the programmers. Firstly, it is an IDE that is as effective and as useful as larger versions of the IDEs like Zend Studio or Eclipse. However, it comes without the customary bulk as well as the bunch of needless functions that make these other IDEs so hard to understand, learn, as well as use. PHPStorm also functions on any type of Operating System with support from the Mac OSX, MS Windows or Linux.

The platform comes up with all the standard features that one can expect from any IDE and these features include code completion, support for the latest version (5.4) of PHP, along with some highly effective documentation that are used during the time of using the standard functions. The platform also justifiably highlights the presence of any duplicate coding. It would also alert the users whenever something goes wrong.

It also provides tremendous support when it comes to navigating between different files along with the classes and creating the UMLs that offer a better view of each & every stuff. Again, project navigation as well as project searching becomes extremely quick in PHPStorm and this makes the search in the Magento projects lightning fast.

The auto upload feature that it comes up with is also astounding, as it is designed to provide the option of automatically uploading the files as soon as changes are made. Besides, one can also specify the exact file(s) and directory(ies) from within a given project and this helps to do away without the need of uploading LESS or any similar kind of files.

It also comes up with a string of plugins that compensate any missing feature(s) in the original IDE. For example, the Magento plugin comes in handy when working with Magento projects. Another such extremely useful plugin that makes the platform so handy is the LESS plugin that comes with the twitter bootstrap, which automatically helps compile the LESS files to the CSS stylesheets.

PHPStorm also is available with the easiest and the most user friendly debugging solution. The debugging session can be triggered off in the browser by just a click of the mouse, irrespective of the project or the web server path.

All said and done, the most amazing feature for which PHPStorm is preferred over ZendStudio or Eclipse PDT as the best IDE is its overall performance. When Linux Ubuntu is used, Eclipse PDT gets painstakingly slow. When it comes to PHPStorm, it really works like a storm in terms of speed and that is what makes it so unique.

In the nutshell, the unique features that make PHPStorm so much adored and preferred include Language Feature Support, PHP Refactoring, Code Completion, Code Formatting, Code arranger and rearranger, PHPDoc Support, and Framework Support.

PHPStorm also comes up with features like rich as well as intelligent code editor(s) that are/is exclusively designed for PHP that practically "gets" the code along with deeply understanding the structure, besides supporting PHP 5.3, 5.4 as well as 5.5 for modern or legacy projects. The IDE also provides smart code completion along with syntax highlighting, configuration for extended code formatting, code folding, Support Language Mixtures etc.

It also features the Code Quality Analysis capability that is possible by PHP Code Sniffer & Mess Detector feature, Smarty & Twig Templates Editing feature, Smart Duplicated Code Detector feature, Efficient Project Analysis as well as Navigation feature, ability to callback references, and the Phar Packages.

You can hire developers from top php development company in India who can help you build products within allocated budgets and time schedules.

We provide php application development services. If you would like to hire php developers from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

How can PHP be of Help to Educational Institutions?

A constant increase is noted in the number of students opting for online education. In addition to allowing students to learn at their own pace and convenience, the online courses require educational institutions to adopt a personalized and student-centered teaching approach. So each educational institution, nowadays, explore options to optimize both conventional and online educational facilities. Despite being designed originally as a server side scripting language for website and internet application, PHP is widely used as general purpose programming language. An education institution can avail several benefits by embracing the programming language that is already installed on millions of websites and web servers.

Key Advantages of PHP for Educational Institutions

Choose from Several Web 2.0 based School Management Systems

An educational institution has option to choose from a variety of web 2.0 based school management systems developed using PHP. At the same time, it can even consider adopting open source PHP online school management systems and student information systems like Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Moodle). Thus, it becomes easier for the teachers to create and administer the online courses without any hassle. These technologies further enable the institute to manage its conventional and web-based educational facilities more efficiently.

PHP Scripts to Create Web-Based School Management Systems
The large educational institutions often need customized school management systems according to their specific requirements. The customized systems are also more effective in complementing the complex course structures and administration policy. An institute can hire a developer to build custom school management systems with robust PHP scripts like Ekattor, MyPHPSchool, Centre and SchoolMation. The programmer can further use the tools to convert the stand-alone systems into web-based solutions to facilitate the creation and administration of courses, along with operation management.

Mange Courses, Semesters and Terms More Efficiently
Often the teachers and support staff have to put both time and effort to manage the courses, semesters and terms smoothly. The PHP-based school management systems will save their time and effort, while ensuring that the operations are carried out without any hassle or flaw. In addition to creating, editing and updating the courses, the teachers can use the system to efficiently manage course sections. Also, they can use the system to setup and manage both semesters and terms. At the end of each term, the faculty can further enter letter grades for each student.

Facilitate Communication and Interaction
The PHP-based school management system can also be used for communication management. It allows users to save the frequently used queries, and run them whenever the need arises. Similarly, the system also enables the administrators to save custom email templates. The custom templates can be used to send email communications to students, faculty and staff. At the same time, it also facilitates the interactions between the students and faculty. On the whole, the system will provide a consistent and comprehensive environment for interaction among the faculty, staff and students despite being located in different places.

Optimize the Security of Your Educational Resources
As the education management system is developed using PHP, the educational institution can avail several security features of the programming language. An organization can always secure the storage, access and usage of its online educational resources by implementing the desired restrictions. It can further implement a personalized login credential system to ensure that the online resources are available only to the authorized users. PHP-based school management systems further back up the educational data constantly to avoid any data loss.

Several reports have highlighted how an educational institution can curtail its operational expenses by launching online education programs and courses. PHP makes it easier for an institution to launch new courses within a short span of time, while delivering richer user experience. At the same time, the PHP-based integrated school management systems enable the institute to meet the new trends in education management.

You can hire developers from top outsource php development companies in India who can help you build products within allocated budgets and time schedules.

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

Tips to build PHP applications on Windows

Within a very short span of time PHP has emerged as a popular web programming language. According to many reports, over 20 millions websites and web applications use this open source programming language. The rapidly growing popularity of the web development language also compels many programmers to switch to PHP development. The programmers familiar with widely used Microsoft products like Visual Studio and SQL Server often find it a daunting challenge to migrate to PHP development. However, these developers have several options to set up PHP development environment on their PCs. The right environment will further make it easier for programmers to build robust web application by using an IDE and PHP interpreter.

Tips to Rapidly Built PHP Applications on Windows

Compare Different Options

You have a number of options to avail PHP for windows. But it is always important to determine the version of PHP you want to use before choosing an option. The simplest way is to download and install software applications like the PHP Binary Interpreter and NetBeans 7.2.1 IDE. Also, you can consider using an .MSI installer, if you are planning to use versions older than PHP 5.3.0. Also, you need to understand the exact steps to configure the environment by extracting content of from these ZIP files.

Use the Built-in Web Server

The PHP 5.4+ comes with a built-in web server. The web server comes with features to facilitate local development without requiring any specific configuration. Also, you can consider using a set of customized development tools like Zend Server, Microsoft Web Platform Installer, WAMP and XAMPP. These tools will enable you to set up and run the Windows development framework in a quick and hassle-free way. The tools will further allow you to avail the advantages of a web server along with MySQL. However, it is also important understand the key differences between using these tools on Windows and Linux.

Avail the Advantages of IIS7

You can even consider developing the Windows development environment by availing the features of IIS7. These features will further contribute towards optimizing the stability and performance of the production system on Windows. IIS7 is also designed with a GUI plug-in called phpmanager that can be used to configure and manage the application development environment in a much simpler manner. At the same time, you can also use the built-in FastCGI features to configure PHP as a handler. Microsoft has further enabled developers to access additional resources and tutorials.

Know the Bugs while Running the Application

Often developers have to deploy a PHP application, developed on Windows, on non-Windows platforms like Linux. The change in running environment will results in creation on strange bugs. Therefore, you must note the changes in the versions of PHP and operating systems. Also, you can consider using a virtual machine to handle the differences between deployment platforms. There are also several software applications that make it easier for you to setup a virtual environment by following a set of simple steps. For instance, Vagrant allows you to create a virtual environment to run the PHP application by following few steps. Similarly, you can use the provisioning software provided by Puppet or chef to set up and customize the virtual machine manually according to the needs of your project.

When you plan to develop PHP applications on Windows, it becomes essential to understand how to set up the development environment properly. You may also have to put some amount of time and effort to create the right environment. But you can start developing the PHP application in no time after setting up the environment on Windows by using customized tools.

You can hire php programmers from top companies in India who can help you build products within allocated budgets and time schedules.

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

Dynamic Website with PHP Programming - the Need of the Hour

An increasing number of people are hooked to the internet nowadays, thanks to the modern technologies ushering in advancements in the form of handheld devices such as tablets and Smartphones. Using the web has now become so convenient that users can do it even when they are on the go. Given this scenario, it is crucial for businesses to build an effective identity across the web.

At present, majority of the web development languages are empowered to cater to the requisites of the modern tech-savvy users. PHP is widely acclaimed among all these languages because of its outstanding as well as distinguished features. Since it is a server side scripting language, it can generate dynamic pages wherein we do not require PHP programmers for writing pages. The pages can be written by end-users themselves.

Dynamic indicates that the website owner can go for real-time interaction with the users, thereby making the communication live as well as extremely productive. In the present times, almost every website is equipped with these features and organizations are demanding additional advancements so far as their websites are concerned. There are many options that one can avail from PHP application development companies. For example, in the domain of PHP e-commerce development, OsCommerce can be used for simple web stores while Magento can be leveraged for heavy, complex e-commerce sites. The same applies to development of CMS websites wherein Wordpress, Moodle, Joomla can be used for all kinds of CMS requirements.

One of the distinguished features of the language is that web developers are capable of integration of PHP code within any version of HTML. This makes room for leveraging the most updated features of HTML 5 together with PHP. Since it is highly flexible as a web development language, web programmers can utilize the various functionalities of the PHP framework to make life more convenient. The frameworks, besides helping in the organization of coding patterns providing outstanding architecture, also render speedier web development. Ultimately both clients as well as developers benefit through saving of time and money.

You can consider any kind of database when you are working with this programming, although MySQL is the most favored choice for web application programmers. When we are starting off with the dynamic website, several factors come into play such as web site design and development, site hosting, the website’s scalability, flexibility and lots more. Let us see in a nutshell why PHP programming is so preferred for developing fast loading, attractive and user-friendly websites.

• If you are considering customization of your website as per your business requirements, then PHP is the most cost-effective choice. Apart from being dependable and offering better performance, this programming language has the capability of delivering rapid and effortless apps.
• This powerful language has noteworthy flexibility. Dynamic websites are in great demand owing to their notable characteristics and using PHP during development of a dynamic site indeed delivers better security and usability.
• As a running multimedia technology, this programming language offers an upper hand. It does not depend on the external plug-ins for running of the programs. They are executed with the help of the servers; therefore nothing is required from the end customers. Moreover, development in the present times has revealed that PHP has evolved a lot, thereby fulfilling the needs of the clients to a much greater extent than was possible before.

These above-mentioned beneficial aspects of PHP together with a number of other advantages have made it a popular as well as valuable language for creation of dynamic websites. Its trustworthiness, better performance, versatility, effectiveness and faster speed, in comparison to other programming languages has made it widely acclaimed amongst manifold PHP programmers and web developers.

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

The Best 10 Lightweight Frameworks that Aid PHP Development

The development process can be made speedier and more secure with the help of a framework. But, a developer, making use of a key framework, like Ruby on Rails, Zend Framework and Grails, must spend some time to be well-versed with the specific approach that each solution encompasses. To address some of the issues related to frameworks, the Rails community came up with alternate solutions like Sinatra and Camping, which continued to adopt the framework approach while at the same time minimizing time investment as well as resource requirements. Usually denoted as lightweight frameworks, such solutions have the potential to implement a large number of projects and is also prevalent in the PHP community. Here we bring to you some of the topmost lightweight frameworks that go in efficient PHP web development.

• DooPHP: It is perhaps the least intrusive and fastest MVC based lightweight PHP framework, coming with a host of impressive features such as authorization and authentication, a REST-based API and a front end and back end caching.
  
• Fat-Free: This is the smallest available PHP framework makes use of the features particular to PHP 5.3. The Core Pack comes with the optimum features that are involved in developing a website, such as HTML forms processor, router, template engine as well as development tools like unit testing suite and code profiler. There is also an additional Database Pack that lends capabilities for database interaction through the Fat-Free Axon ORM. Again, an Expansion Pack clubs several extensions together, incorporating a sitemap generator, thumbnail generator, a CAPTCHA generator and other beneficial features.
  
• Kohana: It started off in the form of a bifurcation of the well-liked CodeIgniter framework. But the 2.0 version involved a complete rewriting of codebase, that rendered exclusive support to PHP 5. Apart from this, Kohana claims to have a swift development cycle, convenient extensibility, a perceptive ORM interface and API consistency. Moreover, a module ecosystem is also growing up with around 60 projects presently existing on the site. Strikingly, a number of these projects tend to be ports of components available in Zend framework.
  
• Limonade: This is one of the most compact solutions available with respect to the quantity of code required to come up with something that is beneficial, with potent demos like the Wikir wiki.
  
• Recess: This framework offers a brilliant user experience, including a meticulously developed website containing good documentation and several tutorial-based options. Apart from providing support to typical features like ORM, custom routes and REST, Recess comes with several unique features like diagnostics, modular support and a GUI-oriented wizard known as Recess Tools that enables users to conveniently develop their primary Recess driven application.
  
• Orinoco: Another lightweight MVC framework, Orinoco offers a synchronized ORM solution and tailor-made routes.
  
• PHP MVC Framework with No-Framework: This PHP framework founded by Rasmus Lerdorf, is fast, secure and incorporates a sophisticated yet simple design.
  
• Simple PHP Framework: This is a practical approach for development of websites using PHP5 and follows the Active Record pattern. This framework is meant for individual programmers who can do without the cumbersome, large MVC frameworks and web design shops that are required to complete projects rapidly.
  
• Yii: Developed by Qiang Xue, Yii, in spite of being categorized as a lightweight framework, is loaded with enterprise-level features such as logging, functional testing integration, capability of code generation and management of website by means of a console interface. Yii has an active extension repository comprising 200 extensions.
  
• Zend Framework: Although weighing 31 MB and comprising a bundle of around 100 components, the Zend framework is designated as a lightweight framework because it facilitates the incorporation of standalone components into custom web applications.

Keeping in line with the community’s trends, PHP developers worldwide are capable of offering a range of solutions to users. With the plethora of possibilities available, certainly one of the above-mentioned frameworks will find favor with you!

We provide PHP development services. To hire PHP developer from us or to know more about our 100% certified PHP development team, please reach out to us at Mindfire Solutions.

4 Dynamic PHP Frameworks for E-commerce Development

E-commerce stands for Electronic Commerce is the latest shopping cart solutions, inventory and order management solutions and e-commerce web solutions which are duly customized to users' requirements. It is most popular online shopping trend going on the web. It is the best sales tool at your fingertips. Through Smartphone you can shop anywhere at anytime. Building an E-commerce store online drives more business today. It encompasses a wide variety of information gathered from e-business planning and prospecting.

Why an online store?

Nowadays online stores transform from small customer bases to much larger and more targeted business. It builds confidence in keeping customer relationships, promoting sales and builds effective and attractive website design which pulls more users. The website is updated with fresh and latest information which is a strong reason to keep customer visits often. Online stores are always on toes for their customers thus remain up to date with information showcasing their latest products in catalog fashion, manage inventory and shipping, as well as take payments in real-time.

Importance of Online store

E-commerce has grown in importance as companies have adopted and grown be it consumer based retail sites, auction or music sites, to business exchanges trading goods and services between corporations. It is faster, cheaper and more convenient where suppliers and potential customers are brought together to conduct mutually beneficial trade. Some classic features have made E-commerce websites more demanding and successful. It stands today on the top-of-the-line online platform, brings customized solution, search engine optimization friendly. Provides a customized dashboard, customized shopping cart and checkout process. Brings expansion and growth in business. And provides excellent services in order processing and shipping management.

Dynamic PHP Frameworks

Frameworks came to existence in 2004, when they offered themselves as a large scope of the solution to build robust applications. Most of the popular PHP frameworks are powering rich customized websites based around the MVC design methodology. Ruby on Rails MVC framework launched around mid-2004 which has been an inspiration for many other PHP frameworks.

PHP has a wider range of frameworks, where WordPress and Drupal are considered best for content management system development, CakePHP and Zend are for website development and Magento, X-Cart , osCommerce and Zen Cart are the best ones for E-commerce solutions. This has triggered immense demand for PHP web development. E-Commerce has become an important tool for businesses worldwide where gaming, retail and travel are the region's top e-commerce segments. Some of the most popular E-commerce PHP Frameworks are:

• Magento: It is a popular Zend framework launched on March 31, 2008. It is widely adopted from small retailer to large multinational businesses and used by 150,000 sites worldwide. It is a unique E-commerce platform having multi-store and multi-site functionality feature, excellent product categorization, shopper filtering and flexible transaction options. It is built on the MVC framework and its searching cart feature is one of the most current in the marketplace. It assists you in developing a great buying cart website in quicker time.

• X-Cart: is another open-source E-commerce solution produces millions of sales to millions of online customers every day. It gives almost all the functionalities which an e-store demand. They come with great design templates, build customized app with simple PHP code and WYSIWYG user interface. Quickly promotes its websites on Facebook leveraging social media power. It provides a user friendly environment having 25,000 online stores around the world.

• OS commerce: is an online store-management software started in March 2000 in Germany. Over 260,000 store owners, developers and service providers work at every stage of running your online store and business. There are more than 7,000 free Add-Ons that are uploaded by the community to use and customize online store. Having 12,800 registered sites, 271,988 community members and 1,545,459 forum postings. A wide range of out-of-the-box features allows online store setup quickly with ease and is readily available as an Open Source web based solution.

• ZenCart: is a PHP based framework, branched from osCommerce as a separate project in 2003. It provides excellent online shopping management system. Easy-to-setup and runs as a full-featured self-hosted online store. It ensures website to look great and showcases their products in a sophisticated way pulling more customers. Its extensive features makes it all the more popular - easy installation, multiple customer modes, unlimited category depth, multiple sales and discounts, unlimited extra pages, multiple payment options, multiple shipping options, discount coupons, gift certificates, multiple language and provides a completely customized package for building richer and advanced applications.

Using these PHP frameworks one can scale up speed in project development and make it easier for users to create stable, reliable, rich, customized and modern web applications. Around 20 million websites around the globe including the big shots like Facebook, Yahoo and every Magento store, run on this framework and PHP is one of the extensively used technologies worldwide. PHP frameworks are tailored to provide online customers with the best shopping experience ever with super exciting features catering to your best business needs.

We provide PHP development services. If you would like to know more about the expertise of our expert PHP development team, please visit Mindfire Solutions.