PHP Programmer

Fencl Web Design PHP Programmers

3-D letters spelling WWW with tools and bolts on the ground

At Fencl Web Design, we can custom-script every bit of the PHP programming we write from scratch. We employ full-time PHP programmers, sometimes called coders or scripters, whose sole job is to take a design project all the way from concept to launch, and write every bit of the scripting that is needed for each particular site. It may sound like a lot of work, but there are very good reasons for it.

Why do we write most of our PHP from scratch, when there are already so many PHP scripts already out there?

Programming from scratch allows us complete flexibility and control over the look, functionality, and expandability of the website.
Scripting from scratch is usually a lot better than hacking an out-of-the-box script to look, feel, and perform as the client wants.
A lot of out-of-the-box scripts have security issues. Many are not programmed with security or hackers as a top priority. Since the hackers have access to the actual code, they can find vulnerabilities in the PHP script and find ways to hack the websites running that script.

PHP is the Clear Choice for Programmers and Developers

Chances are very good that with many of the websites you visited today, at least two-thirds of them are run using PHP scripts and programming to dynamically produce the webpages that you visit. In fact, according to a survey conducted by W3Techs.com at of the end of 2010, PHP was being used to some extent by a staggering 75.6% of all websites surveyed. It has now become the preferred scripting language of choice for programmers to use on the websites they create and develop. It clearly dominated all the others in the survey, with ASP.NET, a Microsoft Windows programming language, coming in a far distant second at 23.2%.

Finding a Good Coder

PHP is a very robust and clean language to use when creating and programming your website, and fits in well with HTML and JavaScript. It can take years of intense learning to become proficient in coding. When you are running a business, you will always look for only the most qualified employees to bring into your company and work for you. They have to be sharp, reliable, and know their job completely. Those same principles apply when selecting a coder. When it comes time to design your website and develop the programming for it, you need to find the right person for the job.

A Shopping List of What You Should Look for When Hiring PHP Programmers

The most important thing when looking to hire a programmer is to find someone that will be able to code your site from scratch. Why is this so essential? Not only will he/she know every part of the programming that went into your site and be able to fix any problems that may arise, but they will also easily be able to expand and add new features to your site.

The second most important thing is to find a coder that is established and will be there for you in the future when you need them. It is always great to find cheap labor, or find a great deal on getting a job done, but having your site programmed with PHP is not a place that you want to skimp and find a fly-by-night company, or find cheap labor from another country, to do your scripting. That may work out for cutting your lawn or doing tedious, data entry type labor for your website, but when it comes to programming, it could definitely end up being the biggest mistake you could ever make.

Fencl Web Design Offer PHP Programmers that:

Really understand PHP and how to use it, not only properly, but securely and efficiently.
Have experience and can show you a portfolio of websites we have done in PHP.
Have the ability to add new features and expand your web site as it grows over time.
We have been in business over 10 years and will still be there when you need us.

What Kind of Sites Use PHP?

There is no limit to what type of website can be run using PHP scripting. By its nature, it is one of the best programming languages to use for sites that have databases, libraries of information and articles, or a large membership base to track and manage.

The way PHP communicates with MySQL databases to retrieve information, is by only accessing the specific portion of data from the database that is requested, saving precious resources, and making it very fast and robust.

MySQL databases are set up in tables, with specific information broken up across different tables. When the PHP program requests data, it is only accessing a very small portion of the database. Because the programmer has already specified in the script exactly where to look in what could be a huge database, the script only looks within that one small area of whatever table that it needs to retrieve the data from. No more searching through the entire database, then pulling what is needed, then sending it back to you, and then rewriting the entire webpage with the new data on it. Old CGI scripts did this fine, but PHP is much more efficient since the libraries communicate with the MySQL databases much more efficiently. With PHP scripting, usually only the dynamic or new information on the page is changed.

Also, because PHP programmers use cascading style sheets (CSS) to format and control the layout, and the way the webpage looks and is displayed, it makes the rendering of each page much, much faster.

A CSS file is a small to sometimes larger file that resides on the server-side of the transaction. Whenever a page is called upon, the CSS file will execute commands that format the style and look of the entire page. Before CSS, each specific part of each page had to be individually coded to control the design, the style, and the layout of each page. Now, one CSS file, or multiple files, can control the font style, size and color, page layout, tables, and every other part of the layout and style of a webpage, or even an entire web site. With PHP coding and CSS, this can now all be done with very little code and very little server-side work.

E-commerce Sites

When creating any type of E-commerce website, using PHP as the scripting language should be one of your first choices because of the level of security PHP can offer. The flexibility, security, and the robust nature of using PHP to run large numbers of database queries and transactions make it a sensible choice to use for an E-commerce site. This is why so many of today's E-commerce sites are using these programs to run their entire site.

E-commerce web sites must have the ability to process large numbers of transactions of confidential, personal, and financial information over the Internet, with complete safety and security.

PHP Blog Sites

PHP scripting is the ideal choice if you are going to be setting up a blog-style site of some sort. There are some excellent out-of-the-box PHP scripts you can choose from, such as WordPress, but the learning curve is often very steep, and these programs can often be very bloated with features you may never, or will never, need.

The best solution for your blog-style site is to have it programmed from scratch. That way, you can have it do exactly what you want from day one. You do not have to take another script, learn how to use it, then try to modify it to do what you want.

With all the hours it will take you to make an out-of-the-box script do what you want, you could easily pay for us to create a beautiful blog site that looks exactly the way you want, and does exactly what you want, without any extra hassle hacking it, or any useless features you'll never use.

PHP for Membership Sites

For any type of membership-based site, PHP coding is also a good choice. Whenever you have large amounts of personal, confidential, and financial data going back and forth through your web site, you should always use PHP and MySQL to make sure it works efficiently and securely.

The best solution for your membership-based site is to have us program it for you from scratch. That way, you can have it look and do exactly what you want from day one. You do not have to take another script, learn how to use it, and then try modifying it to do what you want.

How Does PHP Work?

PHP uses specific commands to dynamically access data it needs from a database or a CSS, then performs various tasks. These include such things as page layout, style and graphics, then pulling any data and information needed, which are then embedded as elements of the page itself. It can also be used to perform a specific task, or tasks, and pull specified graphics, data, or information of various types, based on something the user has selected or inputted.

This is what is known as a server-side, dynamically generated webpage. It changes based on whatever it is told to pull off the server. What this does is keep the entire page from reloading and changing every time you do something, and only pulls the new items it asks for. All other elements of the page reside in cache in your browser, so the programming is an extremely fast and efficient way to produce webpages.

A good PHP scripter will be able to optimize your site's custom scripts so that they run extremely quickly, efficiently, and securely. Only years of professional experience in the industry will forge a fledgling PHP scripter into a true programming savant.

A Brief History of PHP

The scripting language PHP was originally developed in 1994 by Danish programmer Rasmus Lerdorf. Lerdrof assembled C code into a library, and then created a set of Perl scripts to access it and perform various functions to help him manage his personal homepage. Through HTML-embedded commands on his homepage, he was now able to perform such tasks as display his online resume, and track visitors to it and his web site. What is now known as PHP, short for Personal Home Page, was born.

Lerdorf continued development of PHP using CGI script binaries, and added the ability for his scripts to work with web forms, and execute SQL database queries, so he could now communicate with databases. He called this set of scripts, 'Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter' (PHP/FI), and used them to create simple, dynamic web pages, forms, and applications.

In 1995, Lerdorf released his PHP/FI to the public domain as 'Personal Home Page Tools' (PHP Tools) version 1.0, in order to get other developers interested, and help with finding and fixing bugs, and to improve the code. This initial release actually had much of the functionality that modern PHP has today.

PHP version 3.0 was the first to be released under a new name, in order to remove the 'personal home page' implication of limited power and usability. With the release of 3.0, it was renamed using a recursive acronym of PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, and many extensibility features were added. This attracted many more developers and helped make PHP mainstream. It also made it more practical and attractive for much larger sites, such as membership-based sites, E-commerce sites, and larger applications, to begin using it.

Since then, it has taken off as the scripting language of choice for today's robust, dynamically generated Internet websites of all types and sizes. Today, a consortium of developers are constantly working on developing PHP. It is now up to PHP 5.3.5, which was released in January of 2011.