Are you selling products online? There are many small objects that designers and developers must keep in mind to transform visitors into Happy visitors and repeat customers. Today we will discuss some exceptional features that every e-commerce store must have.

Nobody has time to visit retail store for shopping. Everybody loves to shop online. That is the reason why the eCommerce industry is booming in current digital era. And why not? It is more convenient, easy, fast and time saving option to shop online. That naturally increases the competition among the online store owners. Today we are going to discuss how you can standout the best among the competition by some exceptional features of an eCommerce website. If you are selling any product online and seeking for conversion, you must make sure your site has all these features. These features not only make your store technically solid, but also keep your website a preferred place to shop for online buyers. 

Make website accessible from all devices 

According to the latest eCommerce trends, one out of every three online purchase are happening via mobile devices. This shows how it is important to have a responsive design that provides the optimum buying experience on any device. It is also advisable to connect your e-commerce store with a mobile application that makes it even convenient for mobile users to reach you. As search engine giant like Google is also giving higher priority to responsive websites. Having a responsive design is not only important, but it is a necessity of the digital shopping area. It doesn’t end by making your website responsive. You must have a website that visitors think as their own place to shop. Customer should fall in love with your website. Your website must have simple navigation, clean architecture and high quality product images to offer happier purchasing experience from every device to each user.

User experience is the key

How online users feel while accessing your e-commerce store or an application is the key factor that defines the success of the business. Apart from responsive design there are lots of other factors that you must consider to make your website user friendly. A website must load faster. Nobody likes to wait while  page is loading. They will simply leave and approach your competitor. Website navigation should be easy and clear. The user must know where they are (on category pages or sub-category page or product page or in checkout process, etc.) when they land on any page of the website. The precisely designed product page is must. Nobody will like to purchase from the page where they won’t find ample information about the product in an appealing manner.  Shopping cart design is also an important element of an eCommerce website. Shopping cart must clearly display order information, its layout should be simple and it must contain prominent checkout buttons.

Keep it search engine friendly 

What if your potential customers can’t find you online even if you have brilliantly designed website that offers the elite user experience? According to the trends, 94% of the Google searches end up into organic clicks. It means if your website is not properly optimized for search engines, you are missing out a lot. Clean URL structure, Better navigation, easygoing product classification, fresh and unique content, strategic keyword targeting are some of the major tactics that you must consider to make website search engine friendly. Google loves fresh content that provides unique value to visitors. So it is very important to keep website updated with original and fresh content. Backlinks are not dead yet. You must try to earn some quality backlinks to support other optimization. But before all these, it is most essential to check that your website is technically correct and properly optimized.

Power of  Social Media 

Social media can work as helping hands for your brand when someone looks to purchase product from your store. You can utilize the splendid power of social media to build the brand and community for your business. Social media helps you to know what people are thinking about your brand. You can directly communicate with your followers through different social media platforms. It lets you share information among the community and take their reviews too. You can deliver better, if you know the expectations of the community. That is where social media comes into the picture. It provides the evidence of the customer expectations. Social Media Marketing doesn’t always about promoting your product. But it is all about developing relationship and spreading love among the community. You can utilize hundreds of social media platforms available online like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, Instagram etc. to get in touch with your targeted audience.

Short and secure checkout process 

Checkout process is what defines the overall user experience of the website. Customers don’t like lengthy and confusing checkout process. Web security and payment privacy is also the area of concern for the online buyers. Almost 25% of the purchase doesn’t get completed due to web security and privacy reasons. It is essential to make the process secure. Checkout process taking customers from one page to another is very annoying. Ideally, purchase process should be as simple as you shop in retail stores; “You pick the product, make payment and live happily”. It is not always possible to have such process for e-commerce store, as it requires some additional information like payment preference, email information and shipping address, etc. But you can definitely make it simple and understandable if you properly design the checkout process. The single page checkout process can help you achieve your target without troubling customers.

These are five major factors that build the successful e-commerce store. There are lots of other factors like frequency of product updates, in-site search, product comparison, payment options you provide, customer support, product suggestion, shipping options etc. that make a successful e-commerce store. But the crucial element that makes your store successful is how users experience purchasing from your store. If users will like the experience they will defiantly come back and recommend your store too. So, e-commerce website that offers the optimum user-experience considering the offered product is the key to generate maximum revenue through the online store.

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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 preferred choice of the website developers. Due to 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 streamlines (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, is 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 subscriptions 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 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 opens source language, its family of online developers is continuously involved in developing extension to meet the emerging requirements of the businesses. This allows the developers and businesses to easily develop and add newer functionalities and features to their website with ease.

Reason #7 —Embed-ability

The latest trend in adaptive content has made responsive website 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 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’s 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 speed of development as much as it improves 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 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 on all operating system 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 Sympfony, performance optimizers like Phalcon, and PHPixie for speedy application designs or Code igniter for more robust ones.

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Now a day's, most people from teenager to middle age are buying smartphones which includes good quality cameras. As the social networking websites like facebook, twitter etc. grew and we became used to it, the use of photo have increased a lot. People now shoot almost anything they do all day around.

But some of us don't just want to shoot a photo, we want to to shoot it well. May be we can't afford a DSLR but we want to keep enjoying our love for photography with the mobile camera that we have. The following tips are for those. More tips will be added with detail instructions in the next part of this series. 

1. Carefully Clean The Lens: 

     A clean camera lens is a must for a clean photo. When we hold the phone, we leave our fingerprints on the lens of the camera at back. So to get started with mobile photography, first we should clean our mobile camera lens. Clean it with soft, clean piece of cloth and if you see dust inside the frame your mobile phone, then open it and clean from inside also.

2. Work with focus:

     Now with mostly every camera app in your smartphone, you can control the focus. Though sometimes it doesn't work, but it works most of the time. Focus will give your viewers a pin-point direction on what to see in the photo.

3. Get close to the object:

     While shooting photo of a product or small thing, get close to the object as much as possible. This will make it better unless you have a different idea in mind.

4. Do not zoom:

     With virtual zoom of your mobile camera you will never be satisfied. So it is suggested that you never zoom, rather you can crop the image later to keep the only thing you wanted.

5. Keep the camera steady:

     Mobile camera will not work like a cybershot camera, it takes time to capture the image. So don't shake your hand or move camera to something else right after clicking. Instead, wait until it says that the photo has been saved.

6. Shoot more than one photo:

     Try to shoot more than one photo, this will ensure that one of the photos will look better. After all, who don't want some options to choose from, right? So try to shoot 3-4 shots of a single view, so that you can later find the best one.

7. Shoot from different angle:

     If you are not in a hurry or things are not happening very fast, try to shoot one view from several angles. At the end of the day, you can find the best one comparing all of them.

8. Ignore camera app filters:

     From my experience I found that it is better to edit the photo later in computer with photo editing software is better than using a built-in mobile camera app filter while shooting the photo. May be because, photo editing software in computer can perform well than mobile camera apps on your mobile.

9. Try to learn about photography terms:

     Terms like exposure, ISO etc. plays important role in photography. Try to study these terms online and experiment with them. This will open new doors for your mobile photography fantasy.

10. Experiment, Experiment & Experiment:

     There's nothing better than experimenting yourself. So don't wait, turn on your mobile camera and start shooting things around you. Play with your tools of your favorite camera app. 

I was in a hurry while writing post, I will surely come up with the next part very soon.

Let me know your experiences with mobile photography in the comments.

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Clean code, Happy code.

Coding for nearly 6+ years, I can tell you from my experience, clean code is a must. Not a matter what you code, from a tiny program of 15 lines to huge one including thousands of lines, practicing clean code is necessary.

As a coder, you may think why you have to write clean code while you are just practicing. Well you answered your question. PRACTICE, which makes a man perfect. However, following are tips for coders today

1. Indentation: First rule of clean code for me, indentation. If your code is not properly indented, it is a mess for sure. Not only the other guy but also you will not recognize your code after completing another project. So it is a best practice to use proper indentation.

2. Naming Convention: One of the best practices for coding is using a static naming convention for functions, classes, variables, constants etc. Even file names should follow a convention. A good naming convention which is static for all the members team can help other easily understand what a variable for function name means. It should be used properly, and at least should not change in the middle of a project.

3. Commenting (Necessary Commenting): Commenting is another best practices for clean code. But keep in mind, unnecessary commenting will only increase lines and will make the code's readability harder.

4. Distinct convention for special words: Best practices include special words to be highlighted in a different way. For example, naming the constants with uppercase letters, naming the global variable with a preceding underscore (_) like $_system, uppercase letter for SQL query special words etc.

5. Documentation: It is quite like commenting but it has its own rules. Try to study open source code to understand how to write documentations for functions, class properties etc. So that reading those documentations you and other can easily understand what is the use of this properties, what are the parameters of this function, which parameters are required and which has default value. Well documentation is highly required in projects where multiple people are working where one user may use code written by another user.

These are only a few tips. As a coder you should find out good coding / coding standards and practice them even for a single line of code. Another post with more tips will arrive soon.

Happy Coding.

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Millions or may be billions of websites and pages of those websites are out there. To make mark of your own website or to get recognized by the search engine, SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a must. SEO techniques includes a lot, but I will be starting this series post with only 5 best SEO practices.

1. Title of the Content: Title of a content is very important for SEO optimization. The title is also important as because this is what readers read before reading your full content. This has to be attractive and interest grower. Using questions in title, numbers before title helps getting attraction. Learn more about content title here.

2. Keywords: One of the best practices for SEO is to find and use relative keywords accordingly throughout the content. You can researching for keywords using different tools that I will discuss later and use them wisely in your content.

3. Meta Tags: Meta tags are like short introductory of a web page. Best SEO practices includes the use of meta tags for each page uniquely. Meta keywords and Meta description both are important. You should keep your chosen keywords in the meta description.

4. Inter-Linking your contents: Another best practices for SEO is inter-linking similar type of contents. For example you wrote about 5 different cars in 5 different posts. Then you wrote summery post where mention all 5 of them. Link those 5 posts from that summery post. This helps search engines to find relative contents. And also help your reader read more content and stay more time on your site.

5. Keep the content unique: Content is king. Better content, better readers. Remember, google (even other SE) can easily track down duplicate contents. Yes, obviously you need to learn more about topics that you are about to write, but just don't copy them blindly. Instead gather information and write your own ideas.

Thanks for reading.

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The market of website design and development is growing with a fast pace. In order to promote and advertise an organization, firm or business, people are taking help of website designing. This represent the type of business under taken by the owner on the world of Internet. Internet has flooded with billions of websites offering and dealing with numbers of goods and services. We have such organizations that are in the field of web designing and its development. They offers with building up of such websites that are helpful in earning huge profit in the business. These web designing companies are capable enough in delivering the best services and enhancing the profit of the firm with the help of their progressive and innovative steps.

Number of points are responsible for the growth of a website likewise the quality content, graphics, images, look and feel etc. A website is made attractive with the use of these most important features. This task is generally taken by specialized person in the grounds of website designing and development. Developing websites through big companies is not under everybody’s pocket. Therefore, they opt for local website developers. There are some of the reasons why people prefer for local Web Development Company. They are as follows:

Reasonable Charges– Local web development companies charges with their affordable prices as compared to the US, UA web development Companies for the same project.

Trustworthy– Local developers complete their projects with perfection. They know the value of delivering the project on the due date by meeting the deadlines. Their proficiency can easily be judged from their small and big projects. With all these qualities the company earns a reputation in the market.

Complete internet Solutions– Offers like modern multimedia websites, ecommerce websites, Education websites etc. are given with complete internet solutions company. The development from the preliminary stage to ending stage is done with accuracy.

Technically outstanding– The professionals have sound and deep knowledge of website designing and development. The experts with the help of latest and leading technology create adequate website.

Finished services– The handle over the project to their client with finishes services along after sale services with affordable rates.

Attractive Website not only mark their remarkable presence on internet but also represent an amazing brand image for the business. A website should therefore be created by keeping the opponents in mind with innovative ideas and creativity.

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Have you ever optimized a database and felt like the tuning is not working? It could be you are doing one or more of the following database performance tuning techniques.

Here are some 5 well-known database performance tuning myths that it appears, for now, have been debunked.

#5. If the performance sucks, put an index on it

Indexes are great for retrieving data from tables that have a lot of records. They speed up select queries.

But actually…

In the name of Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD), Read or SELECT is only ¼ of the pie. Indexes affect the performance of create, read, and delete. You need to consider the effects of the indexes on create, update and delete operations before you decide to use them.

#4. If it’s slow, just optimize using 101 optimization tips

It is a common practice to rush to optimizing the database if the performance sucks. We have all heard of performance tips so we just have to implement them.

But actually…

What exactly are you optimizing? Have you done profiling to discover what is causing the performance to suck?

#3. Performance tuning should be focused on the database and not application level

Hey Mark, the system is slow. What’s up with that?

Mar: Let me check with the DBA, she probably needs to optimize the database

But actually…

You have code that creates views on the fly and they are not optimized for performance. You are using SELECT * as opposed to SELECT field names. Even when you use field names, you include columns that you do not need etc.

Optimization needs to be considered both at the application and database levels.

#2. You assume HAVING and WHERE are the same.

What is the difference between WHERE and HAVING? HAVING is used when you are dealing with a GROUP BY

But actually…

WHERE filter is used before retrieving the data. HAVING clause returns all the data, applies the filter then returns the results. This makes WHERE clause faster than HAVING.

If you do not have a good reason why you should use WHERE over HAVING then you probably need to use WHERE.

#1. SELECT field1, field2, field3 performs better that SELECT *

Using * when selecting database takes more time because the server needs to figure out the field names.

But actually…

The above is correct but return all the columns using field names still hurts the performance of the database. The key is to use specific field names and only return the relevant columns.

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Have you ever wondered if outsourcing/offshoring is a dangerous threat to your job and by extension your livelihood?

Let’s look at what some of the industry experts have to say based on studies.

“In what might be an underestimate, a University of California study concludes that 14 million white-collar jobs are vulnerable to being outsourced offshore.” says Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and Author of the article The Offshore Outsourcing of American Jobs: A Greater Threat Than Terrorism published by Global Research. “These are not only call-center operators, customer service and back-office jobs, but also information technology, accounting, architecture, advanced engineering design, news reporting, stock analysis, and medical and legal services”

Outsourcing/off-shoring appears to be a threat to most of our jobs. The good news is you can prepare yourself for minimal impact.

The difference between outsourcing and off-shoring

Outsourcing refers to the practice of working with third-party usually within a country to get the job done. Off-shoring refers to the practice of working with a third-party outside a country to get the job done. The major difference is off-shoring deals with overseas services.

In this article, we will use the two terms interchangeably because we are looking at the effect that both have on your job.

Why organizations are opting for outsourcing/off-shoring

• Cut down on operation costs to gain competitive advantage – outsourcing/off-shoring has proven to be cheaper. This means an organization can offer superior products at competitive prices.
• Access to specialized skills – In the late 1990s, Visual Basic 6.0 was a hot thing then came .NET. VB.NET and C# become the next cool languages to use for development. If a company only has VB 6.0 programmers and want access to the latest technologies then they may be forced to outsource development.
• Access to resources – firms that provide outsourcing services such as customer call center already have the infrastructure needed to get the job done etc.
• Allow the business to focus on its core business – Let’s take Google Search as an example. The core business is to help people find relevant information. Technology is a tool that they use to achieve first. Google Search is always working on its search algorithms to make them better. If you want to compete with Google Search on a limited budget, you may want to focus on development a better search algorithm and outsource the programming work to someone who is experienced.

Well-known individual/companies that outsourced development successfully

• AppSumo – AppSumo is a daily deals website for digitally distributed goods and online services. AppSumo was originally created by an outsourced team from Pakistan. After the initial success, the app was re-written Sources
• Fab – Fab is an e-commerce company founded in 2010. Once estimated at a worth of over 1 billion dollars, in November 2014, the company was rumoured to be in talks to sell for 15 million. Fab started out by outsourcing development to a team in India True Sparrow. Fab eventually bought True Sparrow. Sources
• Developer Bob
  
   – He outsourced his job to a Chinese consulting while he watched videos of cats and enjoyed social media. His performance review noted him as the best developer in the building

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Joomla is a popular content management system (CMS), which helps you to create web sites and effective online applications. Any Joomla Web Development Company offers various services to its clients, including web development, template design, conversion of templates, extension development, maintenance and support service etc. There are various features in Joomla, like its easy to use, wider extensibility, and many other such aspects that make Joomla one of the most widely demanded website software. However, while considering its positive features, we cannot ignore the negative aspects of Joomla.

Disadvantages of Joomla CMS

1. While Joomla is known to have modules and templates, the adjustments options are very limited. For the more advanced users, there is always something missing.

2. For very large Joomla websites’ modularity and expendability, the server resources and efficiency reduces. It cannot take too much load. However, for small websites with less than 50,000 visitors, this is not a problem, at least not in the beginning.

3. Whereas some CMS like WordPress, Drupal are for free, most of the plugins and modules are paid for in Joomla. So if you are in budget constraint, check out the functionality you need before choosing Joomla.

4. Also, while working on Joomla platform, there may be certain compatibility issues while using the plugins. At times, for some functionalities to work, we need to change some of the PHP codes.

5. For the first-time users, Joomla website with various functions is not so simple to use.

6. It is not possible to recognise easily a Joomla website unless and until we check the source code. A professional Joomla web development company do not use standardized template and rather create websites that are totally not recognizable as a Joomla website.

7. Joomla offers a number of extensions. At present, it has more than 3000 extensions, and hence becomes a big problem for the users to keep a track of so many extensions.

8. Considering the fact that it is easy to manage a Joomla website, it also becomes an easy victim to hackers who can edit the website. A Joomla site is less secure.

9. According to many, Joomla is not so SEO friendly. The search engine optimization of a Joomla website can greatly be done by installing the SEF plugin.

10. Java script and CSS can get bulky in a Joomla website, especially when you want to change the layout of the site.

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Since 2003, the Wordpress software has been in use. Started as a blogging software initially, Wordpress has continued to be one of the most popular CMS software for both blogging and non-blogging sites. Inspite of the emergence of other softwares for websites building, almost 20% of the world’s websites are based on the Wordpress platform. A professional Wordpress Website Development Company, or a web developer with little or no experience will always opt for wordpress platform for making a company’s website.

What Makes Wordpress a Popular CMS Software?

We present below top 10 advantages of Wordpress:

1. Content updates easily: You can update your website using the Wordpress platform without taking any professional help. It is that simple and easy.

2. Extend-able features: There are many installed plugins in Wordpress. But you can also create our own custom code as plugins for various features and functionality that are not provided by wordpress core. It is that way very  extend-able.

3. Constant support: There is 24-hours support, online-tutorial, guidelines available to build the website of your choice while working on a wordpress platform. Everything is available at just a click of your mouse, for you to learn and access.

4. Free: Another advantage of Wordpress is that it is a free CMS. It is developed on free, open source software (FOSS).

5. Easy SEO: Wordpress has inbuilt plugins for SEO integration. You can add Meta Title, Meta Description and H1 tags and other SEO features which can help on your search engine results and optimize your website.

6. E-commerce Options: Wordpress sites are also available with free plugins required for e-commerce applications.

7. Self-contained system: There is no requirement of HTML editing or FTP software in WordPress. Formatting texts, creating posts, creating new pages, uploading images, videos etc, can all be done without the need for additional HTML or FTP software.

8. Customizable design: The look and feel or the design of the website can be done as per your choice. It is 100% customizable.

9. Optimized for all platforms: A Wordpress website is optimized not only a desktop application but also for all other devices likes as Tablets, Mobiles, Laptops. Your content and branding remains consistent and usable on all devices.

10. Built-In Blogging: It no doubt started as a blogging platform and even today blogging remains the core of Wordpress. Creating a blog and maintaining it is as simple as drinking a cup of tea. You don’t need to be a professional software developer for this.

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With the next major release of PHP just around the corner it’s time to consider setting your applications up in a testing environment to make sure that they are ready to be deployed to the latest and greatest.

Make sure your web applications are PHP 7 ready in a testing environment

Here are a few resources that should get you up and running with PHP 7 so you can test the performance of your web development projects and see if you can notice the alleged 75%+ performance increase.

INSTALLING AND CONFIGURING PHP 7

There are currently three main ways to get a PHP 7 install up and running, depending on the technology you use to manage your development environments.

Vagrant Box 

Rasmus Lerdorf has been maintaining a barebones, publicly available PHP 7 Vagrant box for quite a while. Once you get a little familiar with Vagrant, it should be fairly easy to set up for the beginner. The box is actively used by the PHP internals team for developing and testing PHP 7 so you should be able to get your application running inside of the box without many issues.

Docker Image 

Using a docker image is a lightweight alternative to using the official vagrant box and should be easy to get up and running with some basic knowledge of docker containers. This may be a better solution for people who want to install PHP 7 on a remote server rather than locally, but also want their testing environment to be segregated from everything else that lives on the server.

Compiling From Scratch 

Compiling from scratch is probably the hardest way to get a PHP 7 install up and running, it will however, give you the most control over your install. There is more an increased chance of breaking other things on your system if you compile and configure PHP 7 from scratch, but if you are running into problems with a particular extension this might be the best option for you, as you can simply remove it from the build.

TESTING YOUR APPLICATION IN PHP 7

Once you have your application setup on PHP 7 you can begin the process of testing.

If you do not have automated tests, then this is simply going to be a case of using your application and seeing what breaks. Coincidently, updating to PHP 7 is probably a good excuse for writing some automated tests that cover at least the basic and most important business logic of your application.

If you have automated tests, then the upgrade path to PHP 7 should be almost painless, simply running your test suite should bring to light the majority of incompatibilities between your codebase and PHP 7.

If you are using a static analysis service like Travis-CI or Scrutinizer-CI, then you should be able to configure the environment to run your tests and analysis on more than one version of PHP, depending on your service of choice. This is especially useful if you need to ensure backwards compatibility with PHP 5.x deployments.

PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE

If you have just started – or are about to start a new project with PHP – then it is certainly a good idea to keep PHP 7 in mind when designing your new application. New codebases shouldn’t have a problem when upgrading to PHP 7 as there are only a small number of backwards compatibility issues, which mostly only affect older code (for example, the removal of mysql_* functions).

With that in mind here are a few things to take into consideration when planning for your next project:

Projects that use a Framework

For those of us who prefer to use a pre-built framework like Symfony2, Laravel or Zend, then you are probably going to have an easy time when moving to PHP 7 as most, if not all of these frameworks have 100% of their tests passing with PHP 7.

If you are using an older framework such as Codeigniter or CakePHP – or an older version of Symfony or Zend – then you should proceed with caution. Aside from the fact these frameworks use outdated development practices, most of these frameworks have no planned compatibility patches for PHP 7 so may break when future, minor versions come down the pipeline. It’s advisable that you pick a newer framework for a new project, if possible.

Projects that do not use a Framework

If your next (or current) project is not using a pre-built framework, then to make the transition to PHP 7 easier, you may want to consider making use of some popular pre-built components. This rings especially true when dealing with common tasks such as routing, templating and database interactions.

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