The developers can choose from a number of languages including Perl, ASP, CGI and PHP for web application development. Countless benefits of Hypertext Preprocessor or PHP have made it one of the most popular web development server-side scripting languages. Almost 82% out of the millions of websites active today have been developed on PHP.
The most popular website made on PHP is the social networking site Facebook. Apart from numerous benefits of PHP described in this article, there is another benefit which is adding value to the popularity of PHP. The benefit of easy convertibility i.e. to convert your website developed on another server-side scripting language to PHP makes it more popular in the growing digital world. Here we have listed 10 reasons to convert your website to PHP or build new one on PHP.
Reason #1 – Rich in Performance and Control
Although PHP uses Apache server but PHP web applications use MySQL database and Apache web server. With its technical competence and useful web solutions, it offers highest possible flexibility in performance and control. PHP is also flexible in terms of operating systems. The websites built on PHP are completely portable and responsive to all the operating systems including UNIX, Windows and Linux OS. For text editing and coding in PHP, we have WordPad, TeXShop, NotePad whereas we have to use Microsoft Visual Studio for text editing and coding in .NET and ASP.
Reason #2 – Open Source
The high-end language of PHP as an open source web application developer makes it convenient enough to attract the worldwide web attention. It proposes all the benefits of open source software including flexibility, high-end security, freedom, customizability, quality and cost-effectiveness.
Reason #3 – PHP is Clean
PHP is equally desirable for professionals and beginners because of its clarity in coding. But you should remember that working on PHP is not as easy as it seems to be. Small projects like simple templates are undoubtedly easier to develop but complex projects like Facebook and news websites. It wouldn’t be wrong if we call PHP a computationally complex and intensive server-side scripting language. You have to learn a lot of statistics and formulae as PHP is not for procrastinators but once you become handy on it, you will be able to earn its all benefits with unmatchable convenience and ease.
Reason #4 – Friendly for CMS
The websites developed on PHP highly support different types of content management systems including Joomla, WordPress and Magento. Apart from providing easier configuration solutions, it also offers increased customization so that the programmers can easily meet the requirements of their clients.
Reason #5 – Simplicity
As explained earlier, PHP is simple once you get hands on it. For starters, it is very easy to begin with PHP. The best way to become a PHP professional is to practice its veracity. As a language, PHP is easy-to-use as compared to other development languages like C and Pearl. For any technical assistance you can also hire web developers.
The different and modified versions of PHP with exclusive backup support and built-in functions make it quite supportive for web developers. In other languages, you need to move step-by-step from simpler versions to the difficult ones. For example a developer first learns C, then C+ and then C++ to become proficient in C language.
Reason #6 – Fast but Unchallenging
With all its comfort and ease, PHP is a fast and robust side-server language which allows you to prototype all web applications in no time. It is an unchallenging yet dynamic language which makes the web solutions simpler for you. On whole, the performance of PHP including speed, control, ease and user-friendliness make it an attractive digital solution for businesses, eCommerce and all other types of websites. It is expected that if digital giants like Facebook continue using PHP, it will be taken over more seriously by web developers using other languages.
Reason #7 – Popularity and Vast Community Base
The popularity of PHP is most often compared with NodeJS. Although many people are doing really well on NodeJS yet here are some downsides which make it less attractive and appealing as compared to PHP. NodeJS is five years old and its most recent version is v0.10.25. The unstoppable introduction of different versions of NodeJS has made its users despair of excelling it. The popularity of NodeJS and PHP lies primarily in the developers and then in the users. The number of PHP developers is growing due to its ease and flexibility not only in user-friendliness but in learning as well. The PHP community is by far less-fragmented, more hopeful and bigger than communities of other languages.
Reason #8 –Supportiveness
Apart from the backup support in terms of suggestions, PHP is also supportive in terms of learning. The large community base of PHP is always there to help you on the social media. There are expert platforms and websites where you can learn shortcuts and seek web solutions under the guidance of the professionals.
Reason #9 – Embedding, Convertibility and Upgrading
HTML and XHTML are considered securer options against hackers. Their security increases when they are integrated with PHP, which offers unmatchable ease to embed the website in HTML or XHTML. The web developers can easily convert their websites developed on other languages to PHP for obtaining the benefits of higher security in the digital world of hackers. With PHP, you can convert a static website into a fresh and more dynamic website. PHP is also easily upgradable from previous versions to others. Manual alterations and updates are not required for refreshing the websites developed on PHP.
Reason #10 –Scalable and Measurable
The results of PHP developed websites are more scalable and measurable than websites developed with other languages. With a number of extensions, PHP developed websites become flexible enough to study the performance of your website as compared to the performance of your competitors. The cut-edge extensions and uniqueness in studying the performance make PHP an ideal solution for your eCommerce and business websites.
For starting new projects or converting your static websites for improved performance, control and usability, PHP is undoubtedly an ideal solution. Providing you maximum control and command without even the help of a web engineer, it also gives you complete access to track your performance and find out better web solutions. Although there is some complexity involved in learning PHP but there is also a lot of ease and the future of PHP web market awaiting you.