If you are familiar with web development, then you certainly know PHP like the palm of your hand. PHP was created in 1994, and it originally stood for Personal Home Page. Nowadays, it stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. Throughout the years, this scripting language has proven to be one of the web development essentials. Currently, more than 80% of all web projects use PHP as a server-side language. 26 years after its release, PHP keeps upping its game by bringing up a new set of features and tools, including the latest PHP development trends.
Top PHP Development Trends
If you have a website (or intent to create one), knowing the latest PHP trends will give you a huge advantage. For example, you’ll be able to provide your users and customers with a great virtual experience by having a user-friendly and interactive website.
Most programming languages keep updating as the years pass by, and PHP is one of them. These are the PHP web development trends in 2020:
Easily Create ChatBots
You are scrolling through a website with great books, but because of the quarantine, you want to know if they are still shipping products to your country. You look through the whole site and can’t seem to find any information about it. But then this small pop up appears asking ‘’Can I help you with something?”. You write to this bot, asking your question, and it quickly answers it, explaining how shipment works. Problem solved! The book you liked will be in your hands in just two weeks.
This is a small, simple story about how chatbots can be a great way of enhancing a customers’ experience. They can help users clear their doubts about a service or a product they could eventually purchase. And on the business aspect, companies get to save money by having chatbots offering a 24/7 service, rather than hiring a full-time employee. That’s why, during 2020, 47% of organizations will implement chatbots for customer support services.
And what do chatbots have to do with PHP? Well, PHP is one of the best open-source languages to build chatbots for your websites; developers can build them in just 10 minutes.
Strong Cyber Security
The bad news: Cyber-attacks have increased during 2020. The Global Third Report from VMware Carbon Black studied the effects of COVID-19 on the security of remote working. And according to their survey, 91% of executives stated that cyber attacks have increased while working from home.
When building websites, companies and developers should prioritize cybersecurity. Users tend to transfer their personal information (such as credit cards or addresses) on sites. If hackers manage to break into your website security system, they will have all this information. Imagine your customers losing money from their bank accounts! They will never trust your website again.
The good news: One of the latest trends in PHP web development is cybersecurity solutions. Developers can build websites that store all your website/application data safely. This is important for ecommerce sites where customers make transactions using online payment methods. Using PHP frameworks and tools, you can strengthen security, making it a safe and stable web application for all customers.
Cloud Integration
Most companies over the world are currently relying on the virtual cloud. A big part of this is COVID-19 taking over 2020, making companies lock their offices and embrace remote work. But putting the pandemic aside, the remote work revolution over these past years has made companies use cloud services to store their data. Businesses are aware of all the benefits cloud computing brings to the table. About 79% of websites and applications are currently using PHP and cloud framework to maximize the benefits of both technologies. This cloud approach attracts companies into building PHP platforms that have better scalability and connectivity.
Accelerated Mobile Pages
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source initiative project that optimizes mobile pages, making them faster. Most users visit websites through their mobiles, and the speed of these sites is a crucial aspect that defines whether these users will stay or leave. And if your website is PHP based, you can get the AMP plugging to improve your site’s performance and have fast-loading pages.
To sum it up a bit more, having a fast loading site will lead to happy, engaged users who could turn into customers, which means more money for you! And all of these thanks to AMP.
Internet of Things ft. PHP tools
The Internet of Things (IoT) explained in simple terms means to connect any device (cellphones, computers, washing machines, headphones, etc.) with an on/off switch to the internet. For example, because of IoT, you can vacuum your house with a tiny robot that you control from your phone while you are on the couch watching Dark.
The communication of IoT devices can be implemented through PHP. IoT technology needs a dynamic language that can improve programming structures, and PHP provides several frameworks that can give the best solution. However, there are still many trials to come because although we can see the IoT in many products, it’s still new. This is still a trend that developers and companies are developing, but that has enormous potential for the future.
Better UI
When developers build websites or applications, they keep in mind different aspects crucial for companies to succeed digitally. One of these aspects is the user interface (UI), in other words, the experience users have when visiting a website. When you visit a page where you don’t understand how it works or is really slow, you will likely abandon the page in less than 5 seconds. For business, this means losing potential clients.
One of PHP developers main highlights is their ability to create responsive websites with dynamic effects, beautiful visual representations, and other features that engage users. Without a doubt, UI is one of the aspects that PHP developers take special care of, to ensure that users and potential customers have a great experience and return to the website. And one of the web development trends PHP has during 2020 is that many frameworks (such as CakePHP, Codeigniter, Symfony, etc.) have plenty of features to build creative solutions that engage users.
Combination of Java with PHP
Java is known for being one of the most secure programming languages. PHP, besides being secure, is one of the fastest languages, so combining them is literally having the best of both worlds. You’ll reduce costs and time whenever you need to upgrade websites and applications.
With the PHP/Java Bridge, it’s possible to have both programming languages in the same app. It works with the implementation of a streaming, XML-based network protocol, which can be used to connect a native script engine like PHP with a Java virtual machine.
Interested in Having a Kick-ass Website?
Websites have turned out to be a necessity for businesses that want to thrive in the digital era. However, building UI-friendly websites with a beautiful design, and with aspects such as security and data storage, is not an easy task. Thankfully developers can do the job for us.
At DistantJob, we’ve headhunted talented developers for a decade, so we are proud to say that we are experts in recruiting remote techies. We want to help all businesses around the world to succeed with the talent they deserve. If you are looking to hire a PHP developer or any other developer, contact us. Let us help you hire better and faster.
