11 Reasons Why PHP is Getting Popular Among Web Developers

PHP is one of the most admired and popular server-side scripting languages which are widely used for creating websites. With faster turn-around time, enhanced security, and affordability, PHP has become the preferred choice of website developers. Due to the plethora of benefits of this scripting language, many famous online businesses such as Facebook, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Flickr, etc. are using this scripting language. In this article, I am explaining 11 advantages that make PHP popular among web developers.

Reason #1 — PHP Boasts Simplicity

With PHP, coding is like writing an essay in English for a computer to read, except the essay is a piece of code that instructs it to create and run websites in the most efficient manner possible. Creating a code in PHP is simple, and though you’ll hear some developers complaining that this does not build the necessary coding habits that streamline (read standardizes) coding, it allows the code to be highly personalized (and hence easier to protect).

Reason #2 — PHP Is FREE

PHP is an open source language: free, easy to use, and has a stupendous amount of available documentation — making it the most cost-effective method of creating robust websites and taking over online real estate space without worrying about legal obligations and subscription fees.

Furthermore, PHP reduces barriers to entry for new website developers, allowing them to simply leverage their skills and talents for coding to get started.

Reason #3 — PHP Works Exceptionally Well With CMS

The latest (and recent) trend towards adaptive content has made CMS customization a crucial competitive need for businesses. Adaptive content is content personalized for the individual visitor to the website (using sign-in, or visitor history) to create a one-to-one experience for visitors. This is only possible if the website’s code can be customized and integrated with the CMS.

PHP makes websites amoebic, allowing the developers to transform them at their will. All PHP websites are fully customizable and can be transformed to meet the requirements of the customers with ease because Content Management Systems like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and others are primarily based on PHP. Hence, developing or integrating a robust custom-made CMS solution with your website is simple.

Reason #4 — PHP Accepts Platform Diversity

A code created in PHP can run on all the major platforms, allowing the developer to seamlessly integrate the website across multiple platforms. This allows the business to cost-effectively leverage all existing infrastructure, leveraging platforms as diverse as Windows, Unix, and Linux, with the additional ability to interface their website with MySQL and Apace.

Reason #5 — PHP is Powerful Flexible and Scalable

Facebook, the largest and most powerful social media platform is running on PHP. Facebook has even created a PHP derivative language, named “Hack” to meet the emerging needs of the giant’s content management needs. This shows the level of flexibility, robustness, and scalability that is built into PHP. Compared to other languages, PHP’s biggest advantage is that the website’s code can be updated without requiring a server reboot!

Reason # 6 —Extensions and Add-Ons

PHP is one of the most scalable languages for website development. Being an open-source language, its family of online developers is continuously involved in developing extensions to meet the emerging requirements of businesses. This allows developers and businesses to easily develop and add newer functionalities and features to their websites with ease.

Reason #7 —Embed-ability

The latest trend in adaptive content has made responsive websites and fluid grid systems even more pertinent to businesses. In this context, HTML5 is the unquestioned industry standard for developing highly dynamic and responsive websites. This is where PHP surfaces as the language that allows its code to be easily embedded into the HTML. Developers can easily convert existing static website code into a whole new dynamic one by adding their PHP code into HTML.

Reason # 8 —PHP is Backed By a Vast Community

This is a corollary of PHP being open source language. The language itself has a vast and growing community of developers and professional experts willing to support beginners and involved in continuously addressing the latest problems facing the web developing community. Furthermore, the popularity of the language and hence the availability of developers means that the developers are bound to offer highly competitive pricing.

Reason # 9 — PHP has a Huge Standard Library

What differentiates a good programming language from a great one is the extent of its standard library. Libraries play a crucial role in simplifying and speeding the data processing ability of the language.

Given that online visitors spend no more than 8 seconds per webpage while they are on a surfing spree (in the earlier ‘research’ phase of the buying process), website loading time plays a crucial role in keeping them engaged on the website. PHP offers extensive support for HTTP fetching, regular expressions, URL parsing, and database drivers, to name but a few. It is true that the library is incoherent, but the community’s on it!

Reason # 10 PHP Delivers Exceptional Performance

PHP improves the speed of development as much as it improves the speed of execution. Operating on a conventional web stack, PHP leverages the Apache web server and allows applications to leverage MySQL databases — allowing developers to create bespoke, one-stop solutions for online presence.

Turnaround time is one of the most important factors that enhance the performance of any website. PHP is known for its quick turnaround time. The large standard library, a diverse range of extensions, cross-platform functionality, seamless integration with and customization of various CMS, and embed-ability allows experienced developers to offer exceptionally fast turnaround times at highly competitive rates. Further, any website that is developed using PHP has faster data processing features and that website is compatible with all operating systems such as Windows, UNIX, and so forth.

Reason #11 — PHP offers Diverse Frameworks

PHP is able to deliver exceptionally fast turnaround times because it has a sufficiently large family of PHP frameworks. These range from the enterprise-level Zend and Yii frameworks, all-rounder Laravel and Symfony, performance optimizers like Phalcon, and PHPixie for speedy application designs, or Code igniter for more robust ones.

Conclusion:

As explained in this article above, PHP has many advantages and other business benefits it is quite popular and hence it is easy to find developers who can work on PHP. Its development process is comparatively easier and quite flexible. Also, it is faster than most other development languages such as Python. Check out the PHP Alternatives.

So, if you require a custom-built website, PHP is the right choice. In case you need any professional support, feel free to connect with an expert from TIS. You may contact us with your queries and comments and we will surely guide you and help you to build a successful website which is capable of fulfilling the requirements of your organization and helps in flourishing your business.