Great Uses for PHP

PHP pretty much can do anything. Its main concentration is server-side scripting, but it’s also widely used as multipurpose programming language. If you acquire PHP, then you can do everything that any other CGI program does, and even more due to its endless possibilities. If you are not an excellent expert in scripting languages, although initiated with the fundamentals of PHP, you must be wondering in what aspects and how PHP can make your website more attractive to customers. In this article, we would like to reveal several creative uses for PHP.

The Power of PHP

PHP is good to be used in most of the main operating systems including Microsoft Windows, RISC OS, Mac OS X, LINUX, many variants of UNIX, and many others. A big number of servers these days support PHP as well. This allows anyone who’s working with PHP to choose from variety of operating systems and web servers, moreover, it gives you an option to utilize object oriented programming or procedural programming, or even the mix of the last two.

PHP has a feature of supporting broad range of databases, and it could be the most powerful and substantial characteristic. Also, it has a support system for conversing with other services applying protocols IMAP, NNTP, LDAP, SNMP, POP3 and many others. It’s also enables opening a raw network sockets and cooperate with the other protocol. Furthermore, PHP has support for the WDDX complex data exchange among the web programming languages.

PHP and E-commerce

There are various uses for PHP, but e-commerce could be the major one. In our extremely fast growing world, internet marketing is a vital tool that is helping to increase sale volumes for companies. Nowadays it is natural and quite logical for businesses of all levels to be looking for an extra profit online. In order to achieve distinctiveness, uniqueness and bold vantage with the customers, one should build their own or consolidate available e-commerce solutions.

For beginners for whom basics of PHP programming is a new thing or those perhaps somewhat familiar with certain fundamentals it is recommended to utilize existent internet commerce solutions. Such as, more popular one’s Magento and premium class Shopify. Magento PHP framework is really good choice for amateur developers, it is pretty easy to use, it has a flexible design options, strong marketing tools and most important 24 hour technical support. Regarding Shopify, it is a first-class PHP development framework. It is extremely easy to use, offering completely customizable online store styling, and it’s simply the best among the others.

Professional programmers on the other hand, have an option of coding the whole application from ground up or utilize available PHP framework, which will ease the development process significantly. For advanced and intermediate PHP developers it’s recommended using CakePHP and SodeIgiter frameworks. Which one to implement is solely personal preference, but each of these PHP frameworks has a broad documentation on how to build applications from a scratch.

PHP for CMS

One of the essential uses of PHP is building the CMS’s. A good Content Management System created using PHP is a user friendly and extendible mechanism, that produces clear URL’s, also allowing adding of content and making updates without a deep knowledge of CSS and HTML.

PHP and XML Files

One of key features in PHP 5 is the XML parser. PHP gives the ability to parse XML files, when not many browsers can do that and output the content of an XML file. XML usage is important for data storage and transfer data on various devices, also XML is important for RSS feeds. Operating with XML files using PHP is very similar to handling the opening, closing, and reading files.

PHP Mailing lists

PHP mailing lists is a great way of keeping customers updated and informed regarding firms products, services, sales, holidays, various announcements etc. Automated newsletters will provide clients with all important information and everything they need to know about the businesses current situation and activities. One can write using PHP their own, unique script to send newsletters via e-mail to customers, or employ ready script.

PDF Files with PHP

PDF files became quite prevalent among institutions around the world. It is valuable knowledge to be able to produce them. When using PDFLib anyone who is familiar with PHP can create PDF files. Adobe’s Portable Document Files are easy to generate in PHP, making it an even more superior glue language than before. Since PDFlib is included in PHP 5, it makes it even easier and one can create as many PDF files as needed in various formats.

Dynamic Templates with PHP

When using PHP it makes easier to add pages and certain elements more dynamically to the website. All starts with building the HTML page and dividing it into the header, general content, and footer sections. Top navigation sections and sidebars acquire dynamics as well. The irrefutable fact is that the more “templated” the site is the less complicated to update the content.

Author Bio: Roman Kyncevskiy is a web programmer and works in QArea software development company specializing in delivering high quality PHP development services. When he’s not coding he’s riding or hanging out with friends.