PHP & LAMP Stack
PHP is a server-side scripting language designed for web development but also used as a general-purpose programming language. As of January 2013, PHP was installed on more than 240 million websites (39% of those sampled) and 2.1 million web servers. LAMP is an archetypal model of web service solution stacks, named as an acronym of the names of its original four open-source components: the Linux operating system, the Apache HTTP Server, the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), and the PHP programming language. The LAMP components are largely interchangeable and not limited to the original selection. As a solution stack, LAMP is suitable for building dynamic web sites and web applications. LAMP may also operate in a Windows environment, where it is referred to as WAMP. We have nearly 15 years of PHP/LAMP experience and find it to be the most affordable solution for budget-minded small and medium sized businesses.
So, what can you do with PHP?
Reporting Applications
Do you have data in CSV files, spreadsheets, text files, or a database that you need to output to a grid that you can view online? Do you need to password protect that data? Do you need to sort or search it? Do you need to build and run reports with that data? We can leverage frameworks such as Laravel, CodeIgniter or CakePHP in order to provide the most value for your dollar when creating reporting applications and Create/Read/Update/Delete (CRUD) applications.
E-Commerce
E-commerce is one of the major uses for PHP. From a small business level to an enterprise level, businesses are always looking to create additional streams of revenue online.
Getting Started with E-Commerce
If you are looking for a cheap out of the box solution, we would suggest using an existing open source e-commerce solution. Some of the available options are:
Building an Online Community
Whether your website is about business, entertainment, or products and services, internet users need to feel connected to the product or message. As a user, if I have a question and I need support right away, a hotline or an e-mail form is often insufficient. With an online community, your visitors can help solve each other’s product-related issues, and even answer technical questions. You still have to provide some level of after-sales support, but a community can effectively decrease your workload and provide useful feedback.
You can build your own PHP-driven online community, or choose from widely available solutions that we can implement and integrate into your website. Some popular solutions include:
Developing Facebook Applications
Web can integrate your website with Facebook using PHP.
Generating PDF Files
The PDF format is Adobe’s proprietary file type for document exchange. Using a library called PDFLib, we can generate PDF files with PHP. An example of why creating PDF files might come in useful is, if you were building an online invoicing application and you wanted to output an HTML-generated invoice in PDF format. You can then send the invoice via e-mail or print a copy of it to your client.
Parsing XML Files
PHP allows you to parse XML files. Parsing XML is an important feature of PHP 5 because not all browsers can output the contents of an XML file; so we can create a parser in PHP to facilitate this process. Using XML is important for RSS feeds, and also for data storage and rendering data on different devices – for example, cell phones use an implementation of XML called WML (Wireless Markup Language). Working with XML files in PHP is similar to handling the opening, closing, and reading of a file. The steps involved are creating an XML parser, setting functions to handle your opening and closing XML tags, opening the file for reading, reading the file incrementally and then closing it.
Mailing Lists
We can write you scrips to send e-mail newsletters to your client, or use a ready-made script. PHP mailing lists are an excellent way to keep your clients informed about your services and products, holidays, vacations, and general announcements. Anything your clients need to know can be included in your automated newsletter. There are also open source solutions we can implement for you if cost is a concern:
Image Processing and Generation
Using the GD library with PHP, we can do more than just output HTML to the browser. We can output images in different file types including jpeg, png, and gif. This feature of PHP is useful because it allows you to create thumbnail pictures, add watermarks, resize and crop images, and even create a photo gallery,
Image by “Cal Evans“
Create Graphs and Charts
Do you need visual representations of numbers on your site? PHP can create graphs and charts too. Using Image_Graph, and other available soutions, we can create different types of charts including pie charts, bar graphs, impulse, dot/scatter, step, candlestick, box & whisker, radar. This is incredibly useful for e-commerce websites or websites where you need to present graphical data in a concise manner.
Content Management Systems
One of the most popular uses of PHP is creating or using Content Management System. A good CMS allows your clients to update their website and add content without any in-depth knowledge of HTML and CSS. A good Content Management System should be user friendly, extensible, produce clean URL‘s, and be search engine friendly among other things. We can implement and customize one of the widely available free or commercial solutions listed below:
Create a PHP Photo Gallery
By simply using PHP’s file handling functions, we can create your own photo gallery.
Create Dynamic Website Templates
Using PHP, we can make it easier to add pages and elements to your websites dynamically. We begin by creating the HTML page and splitting it into the header, main content, and footer sections. Add the .php extension to your subsequent pages and use server-side Includes for the header and footer for each new page. We can also have dynamic sidebars and top navigation sections. As a matter of fact, the more “templated” your site is, the easier it is to update the content.
Create WordPress Plugins
If you have done any work with WordPress, you will know that it is a highly flexible blogging system that you can use to do just about anything from e-commerce to content management and we can use PHP to help extend your WordPress implementation.
