A small business can use its website as a powerful marketing tool to compete with large and established business. The website will make it easier for the small enterprise to reach out to more potential customers, promote products/services, and drive online sales. But the small businesses must pick the right client-side and server-side technology to launch robust websites without spending a lot of money. As an open source server-side programming language, PHP helps small enterprises and start-ups to build custom websites without investing additional funds. The developers can further take advantage of the open source PHP web frameworks, content management systems, and development tools to accelerate custom website development without increasing development cost. There are also a number of reasons why using PHP for small businesses a good idea.
Why Many Small Businesses prefer PHP to Other Server-Side Programming Languages?
Use a Mature Web Technology
A small business has option to choose from a number of open source web programming technologies. But PHP, unlike other programming languages, was developed with built-in web development feature. There are many advantages of PHP for web application development. PHP was incepted in 1995 with features with work with work with web forms and communicate with databases. But the server side technology has been evolving consistently to meet the emerging web development trends. The latest version of PHP enables developers to improve website speed without deploying additional resources.
Build a Variety of Website
At present, PHP is being used by high traffic websites like Facebook.com, Wikipedia.org, Baidu.com, Washingtonpost.com, Sina.co.cn, and Aliexpress.com. The usage statistics posted on several websites depict that PHP is currently used by over 80% of all websites. Hence, a small business can use PHP for developing both small and large websites. It can even use PHP for developing static websites as well as robust eCommerce websites. The PHP frameworks and development tools further make it easier for programmers to create custom web application according to varying business needs.
Enhance the Website’s Accessibility
Nowadays, users access websites on different devices, platforms, and browsers. Hence, the small business must focus on the website’s accessibility to attract and engage visitors. PHP is compatible will major operating systems and web servers including Windows, macOS and Linux. Likewise, a PHP application can also be deployed on widely used web servers like IIS, Apache, and iPlanet. The PHP scripts also run seamlessly on popular web browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. The developers can also use PHP parser to run the PHP scripts without server or browser. Hence, PHP helps a small business to improve its website’s accessibility and user experience.
Prevent User Abandonment
Major search engines like Google consider loading speed of a website as an important search signal while ranking websites. Also, a large percentage of users nowadays abandon websites that take more than three seconds to load. That is why; a small business must improve website speed to prevent user abandonment. PHP 7 comes with an array of new language features and enhanced speed. Several studies suggest that PHP 7 make web pages load quicker and run websites faster. A small business can easily improve the website speed and prevent user abandonment by taking advantage of PHP 7.
Loads of Libraries and Extensions
The business models and requirements differ from one enterprise to another. Like large enterprises, small enterprises also need to build websites according to their precise needs and objectives. PHP makes it easier for programmers to add functionality to the website by providing a variety of libraries and extensions. The developers can even use PHP libraries and extensions to customize and modify a website according to precise business requirements without writing additional code. They can further take advantage of these libraries and extensions to write custom websites in PHP rapidly.
Many Micro and Macro Web Frameworks
The developers can further accelerate PHP web application development by choosing from an array of micro and macro web frameworks. In addition to speeding up custom website development, the frameworks also helps programmers to accomplish common web development tasks, work with databases, and wireframe the web application. However, the features provided by individual PHP frameworks differ. The developers can accelerate development of large web applications using robust PHP frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Yii, Zend and Phalcon. Likewise, they can build small web applications rapidly using micro frameworks like Slim, Silex, Phalcon (micro-stack version), Zend Expressive, Flight, Symfony (Microkernel), Lumen and Wave.
Take Advantage of Robust CMS
Often small enterprises explore ways to develop and manage websites without hiring professional web developers. The content management systems make it easier for small businesses to create and manage websites by providing a variety of functionalities and tools. A small enterprise also has option to choose from a number of PHP based content management systems including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, SilverStripe and Concrete5. The themes, plug-ins, extensions, and widgets provided by these content management systems enable entrepreneurs to build websites without writing complex code. Also, the small businesses can use the content management system to manage and maintain digital content efficiently.
Avail Benefits of LAMP Stack
A small business also has option to accelerate website development and deployment by using PHP as a component of LAMP stack. As a robust web development platform, LAMP enables enterprises to take advantage of open set technologies like Linux operating system, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL and PHP. In addition to improving the website’s performance, these components of LAMP stack further provides a solid foundation for website development and deployment. A small business can use PHP as a component to LAMP stack to build and run a high performing website without increasing any additional expenses.
Curtail Development Cost
As mentioned earlier, PHP is an open source server-side programming language. A small business can use PHP without paying any licensing fees. At the same time, it can curtail website development time and cost significantly by using open source PHP web frameworks, content management systems, and development tools. Most of the PHP web frameworks and PHP based content management systems are open source and free. Hence, a small business can opt for PHP to build and manage the website efficiently without incurring additional expenses.
On the whole, PHP, as an open source programming language, helps small businesses to reduce website development cost. The open source PHP frameworks, content management systems, and development tools further help small enterprises to accelerate website development and deployment without incurring additional expenses. At the same time, PHP helps small businesses to keep visitors engaged by improving the website’s accessibility, functionality, performance, and security.
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