7 reasons PHP is good for business development
Today, there is a lot of debate about whether it is advisable to use PHP for developing IT products and services.
7 reasons PHP is good for business development
Today, there is a lot of debate about whether it is advisable to use PHP for developing IT products and services. You can find so many emotional publications on the Internet (mostly written by developers) describing the shortcomings of PHP and its frameworks that business owners and IT managers of companies are really beginning to doubt: is it worth messing with this PHP at all? If so, why is it then chosen by such market leaders as Slack, BlaBlaCar, and Spotify?
Well, first, because PHP is the brainchild of open source, it boasts a large community that continually contributes to its development. Therefore, with each version, both PHP himself and his frameworks are really getting better. Which creates a good base for other benefits that make it so popular when developing business solutions. From websites to large marketplaces, fresh startups to established business players, PHP is the go-to choice for a number of practical reasons.
1. PHP is an open-source language and it saves budget
The most attractive feature of PHP for developers and IT managers is its open access. No need to pay for a license. In addition to the obvious savings, the benefits also come from a large and developed community, which is constantly improving and supplementing the functionality. Hundreds of ready-made PHP solutions have already proven their viability - take it and use it, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Although, in fairness, this main advantage of PHP is at the same time its main threat to projects. Ease and accessibility significantly reduce the threshold for entering the profession, and this inevitably leads to a decrease in quality. Therefore, the choice of a professional team in the case of PHP is simply critical.
2. PHP development takes less time
PHP is partially an object-oriented language. This enables to reuse of the code, which saves time and effort during development. There are many PHP frameworks: Symfony, CodeIgniter, Laravel, Joomla, WordPress, etc. Each of them has its own functionality and is tailored for specific tasks. PHP was originally optimized for the rapid creation of web applications. It has such built-in functions as using GET and POST requests, working with HTML and URL. For business, this means that development time (and, accordingly, costs) are reduced, and investments begin to pay off faster.
3. PHP is flexible and well compatible
PHP's significant advantage is its flexibility and versatility. It is compatible with all major platforms, from Windows, Unix and Linux to MacOS; supports most servers (including Apache, Microsoft IIS, Netscape, iPlanet, Caudium, Xitami and Tornado) and more than 20 databases (including MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, etc.) Therefore, PHP is often chosen for building cross-platform applications: this allows businesses to make the most of their existing infrastructure at a minimum cost.
While PHP is traditionally recommended to be used alongside HTML, it integrates successfully with JavaScript, WML, XML, and other programming languages. There are no problems with the browser either, since all scripts are compiled on the server side.
Any project at one stage or another undergoes functional changes. Due to the dynamic nature of PHP, changes can be implemented at any stage of development without wasting time.
4. PHP services scale well and are well documented
In terms of ROI, it is more profitable for companies when development takes place in multiple iterations. This allows you to run different software modules one after another, making the necessary adjustments along the way. PHP allows you to develop and maintain scalable IT projects and continuously generate any number of pages with any customization.
PHP code is transparent and well documented. This means that it takes less time to figure out what is going on in it - of course, if it is sensibly written. So, you can safely implement iterative development with minimal risk of procrastination if you suddenly must change the programmer or even the whole team along the way
5. Hassle-free support and updates
Due to its good readability, it is not difficult to change and modify the PHP code. As a result, there are much fewer problems with support and updates. PHP projects easily and quickly adapt to new applications that appear on the market, as well as new business requirements. And thanks to the contributions of the open community, new functionality that meets emerging business needs appears regularly and costs nothing. Since the code is easy to understand, support for services in PHP can be carried out by any team - not necessarily the one that created the project
6. PHP opens great opportunities for hosting
PHP's versatility makes it popular with hosting providers. Any reliable provider supports PHP and provides hosting services for sites on it. Typically, hosting packages provide PHP support at no additional cost - including either free hosting plans or cheap ones with unlimited storage and a free domain name.
7. Good performance of PHP sites helps to retain customers
Fast website loading is extremely important for customer retention. People today are able to hold involuntary attention for 6-8 seconds, and if the site is loading slowly, they close it before the end of the load and never return. The speed of loading sites in PHP is high due to good customization and integration with various content management systems.
PHP was originally created for developing dynamic web pages, so its scripts do this better than other programming languages. Its code is easily embedded in HTML, which makes it easy to convert static pages to dynamic ones. In fact, it is the best language for creating complete websites based on the HTML standard.
PHP by default enforces 1-1 mapping between URLs and files, which allows designers, programmers and other team members to edit and create web pages. This is especially useful in the case of large sites, mostly with static content, many pages, and different templates.
In conclusion
The rise in popularity of PHP and its frameworks in recent years has been significant, and this trend continues. The main business benefits of PHP are its cost-effectiveness, scalability, simplicity, compatibility, and convenience. By itself or, more often, in combination with other technologies, PHP is suitable for creating any type of IT projects: from simple websites to CRM solutions and large marketplaces.