Hire PHP Developers

The 1^st release of PHP was way back in 1995. That’s quite some time ago when it comes to the software development industry. However, in this time, many developers and organizations have done great things with it. Magento, the popular eCommerce platform uses PHP as its underlying technology. CMS platforms like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla use PHP as their foundation too.

By its very design, PHP makes it easy to accomplish a number of web development tasks. For example, developers have built PHP scripts that allow you to easily put a Skype live chat box on your website.

Many developers know PHP, so you might think that hiring PHP developers is easy. Indeed, you can find PHP developers on the freelancer platforms, and lots of them too. However, the hiring process can be quite problematic for a number of reasons.

To negate these problems, you need to analyze your project requirements carefully. This will help you to choose the right hiring models. We will get to this later.

Let’s start by looking at how you can evaluate, shortlist and interview your PHP programmers for hire. We suggest that you look for the following skills:

Essential PHP programming skills

When you interview PHP developers, you should look for the following:

• The programmer should have in-depth skills in PHP. While this programming language has many strengths, it also has certain limitations. You need PHP developers that know how to use the strengths of PHP to your advantage while managing the limitations.
• You might have planned to use one of the popular PHP frameworks in your project. Laravel, Codeigniter, Symfony, and CakePHP are a few examples. You need PHP programmers that have several years of experience in your choice of framework.
• Successful PHP programmers should have experience with front-end technologies like JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3. This is especially important in website development projects.
• You need PHP developers that have in-depth knowledge in modern SQL databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL. You should also look for experience in popular NoSQL databases like MongoDB.
• You should look for PHP developers that know how to create database schemas.
• Effective PHP developers know how to integrate various data sources and databases into one application system.

Other skills that are important to developing web applications using PHP

You should look for a few more skills, however, these aren’t necessarily tied to PHP. These are as follows:

• A good understanding of the “Model-View-Controller” (MVC) design patterns;
• Object-oriented programming skills;
• Server-side development skills;
• The familiarity with common source code management tools;
• The skills to develop scalable web apps.

Note: Depending on the features you offer in your web app, you could also use other modern technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Analytics, etc. You need to evaluate such skills separately, e.g., Python for AI development. In this guide, we focus on skills primarily needed for web development using PHP.

Other software development skills required for PHP web development

To ensure a successful final product, you need PHP developers that have some other skills too. These are as follows:

A. The skills to secure web applications

Most web apps process some amount of sensitive data. These will vary from application to application. An eCommerce application will process payment data, whereas an online learning web app will process user credentials, etc.

No matter what kind of sensitive information you process in your app, you need to secure it. Data security and privacy have emerged as a key focus area for almost all businesses, and governments have stepped up to ensure it is protected. Depending on the industry you serve, you might need to comply with stringent regulations concerning data security and privacy.

You need PHP developers that know how to code secure apps. Consider the following:

• The knowledge of key application security risks and how to mitigate them;
• The knowledge of tools and technologies like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and encryption;
• The maturity to understand the importance of compliance and security testing, which makes developers collaborate proactively with security and compliance testers;
• The knowledge of securing 1^st party APIs that you might develop.

B. The knowledge to develop 1^st party APIs

APIs have made a big difference to modern software development since they allow the front-end of an application to access the backend using a consistent framework. You can scale up your software development process using APIs.

For a few non-core features, you can use leading 3^rd party APIs. However, using too many 3^rd party APIs can cause many dependencies. We always recommend that you develop 1^st party APIs for your core features.

The de-facto standard for API development is REST (Representational State Transfer). We recommend you develop RESTful APIs when developing PHP web applications. You should look for the following skills:

• Developers should know how to host APIs using cloud platforms.
• They should know how to use modern databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB to build the backend.
• Programmers should know how to use relevant tools for API development and documentation.
• You need developers to know how to create API endpoint URLs intelligently. They should also be able to create effective rules for API requests and responses.
• Programmers should know how to secure APIs. They need to use various tools and techniques like authentication token, encryption, quotas, throttling, and secure gateways for this.

C. The knowledge of working with cloud platforms

You could use cloud platforms to expedite your project. For web application development, “Platform-as-a-Service” (PaaS) platforms can help.

Reputed PaaS platforms manage the cloud infrastructure, networking, storage, operating system, middleware, and runtime environment. You can focus on development instead of infrastructure management.

You can use the DevOps tools and auto-scaling solutions offered by the PaaS platform. PaaS platforms also help you to integrate APIs. Look for coders that know how to work on reputed PaaS platforms like AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

D. The knowledge and experience of successfully delivering software development projects

Delivering software development projects successfully requires more than technical skills. You should look for the following:

• PHP programmers should have lots of experience in reviewing code. While testing is important, it can’t unearth all defects. Code review is crucial to detect some types of defects, and application security vulnerabilities are prime examples of this. Code review can also detect defects early in the cycle. You should look for experienced PHP programmers since they typically have code review experience.
• Successful programmers know how to code in line with the UI design. They know how to implement the intricacies of a great UI design in their code.
• While software architects choose the architecture pattern, effective programmers should know how to code in alignment with the architectural decisions.
• Great PHP programmers know how to work in a team. Take the example of establishing a CI/CD environment. Effective collaboration between developers, testers, and DevOps engineers carry as much importance for this as DevOps tools. Look for the ability to collaborate.

How to find the best PHP developer?

You now know the skills to look for when hiring PHP programmers. It’s time to start the hiring process, which involves the following:

1. Choose freelancer platforms or a development company?

Choosing the right hiring platform is an important factor. Hiring incompetent people from the wrong platform can derail the project. Turning a troubled project around requires lots of hard work and money.

Think through your project requirements carefully. This can help you to choose the right hiring platform. General-purpose freelancer sites make it easy to hire PHP web developers. You can interview the candidate directly. Unfortunately, it requires lots of time to vet them.

Also, remember that freelancers won’t work full-time on your project. Managing the project schedule can be hard if you have part-time developers.

These platforms don’t offer any management oversight. If you are in the USA and managing a freelancer from India, for example, then time differences and general management processes become important! A great tip is to hire only in regions that have at least sereral hours of time overlap.

Software development-focused freelancer sites have stringent screening processes. They allow only the top developers into their communities, therefore, they will likely provide you with experienced PHP developers with robust skills. The downside is that they don’t provide any management oversight, and you need to mitigate the risks of working with freelancers.

Hybrid software development companies such as DevTeam.Space allow you to hire dedicated PHP developers from their vetted communities. We offer a transparent and simple contracting process, which is aimed to help save time. All of our developers are experts in their field and have industry experience too.

We implement physical, technical, and procedural safeguards to secure your sensitive data. We get our developers to sign a “Non-Disclosure Agreement” (NDA). This proactive approach to data security is a big advantage.

2. Interview the shortlisted candidates

Now that you have decided on the right hiring platform, assuming that you have not hired from a hybrid software company, which will do all the leg work for you, you will need to start the interview process. If you are a PHP expert, then you should be able to interview the shortlisted candidates.

If you aren’t an expert, then we suggest that you get interview questions from the Internet. You can also ask a friend, an associate, or hire a PHP consultant with PHP expertise to conduct the interviews.

Ensure that you cover the skills we have highlighted. Take the time to investigate each candidates past PHP project experience.

Remember that projects like eCommerce development are relatively easy, therefore, look for more complex PHP projects in their portfolio. Review the testimonials in their portfolio. Don’t make the mistake of basing your decision on them alone.

Ask how they dealt with complexities and what kind of development processes they have used. Check their knowledge of coding best practices and find out how they go about debugging complex errors. Focus on application security and find out how they would mitigate key security vulnerabilities like injection, broken authentication, etc.

Explain your project requirements to the shortlisted candidates. Ask for their view on the project and how they would go about it. Don’t satisfy yourself with general high-level responses, delve deeper and ask for specific points about how they would approach your project.

3. Provide detailed information about your application development project

The PHP developers you select need sufficient information to succeed in your project. Explain the project background to them and provide detailed documentation like requirements, technical solutions, architectural decisions, etc.

They will need to work closely with the rest of your team so introduce them to your team so they can get to know each other. Establish a communication process. The developers you select need access to the technical environment of your project, therefore, grant them the relevant access. Show them your code repositories in GitHub.

You need to establish accountability. Give a detailed overview of the roles and responsibilities. Explain your project plan including sprints. Describe the various milestones and acceptance criteria. Describe the review process and how you will approve milestones. You are now ready to start.

Interview tips for you when you hire PHP programmers

Keep the following interview tips in mind when you look for PHP programmers:

A. Assess the performance tuning experience

As a server-side scripting language, PHP offers a lot. However, it’s not a compiled language. It’s not as fast as the popular compiled programming languages. PHP development teams need to proactively work towards closing the performance gaps.

Look for software developers with experience in performance tuning in PHP projects. This will especially pay off in PHP web development projects.

B. Evaluate the relevant PHP development experience

You need a laser-like focus on relevant experience. Don’t think that the best PHP developers are the ones with the best theoretical knowledge.

PHP is a programming language with many features. Even the top PHP developers might not know all of the features fully. They don’t really need to know all of the features!

A successful PHP project focuses on simplicity. Successful teams work with the 80:20 rule. They meet 80% of the project requirements with 20% of the programming language capabilities.

This is why you should focus on the relevant project experience over theoretical knowledge. That’s also why we recommend you hire programmers from trustworthy PHP web development companies. Companies like DevTeam.Space offer highly credible PHP development services. You can easily assess the relevant experience of developers.

On the other hand, it’s hard to assess the relevant experience of freelance PHP developers. Freelance PHP developers might show a comprehensive project portfolio. You might think that you found highly competent freelance PHP developers. However, you can’t easily assess their project experience.

It’s harder if you hire remote PHP developers that are freelancers. After all, you don’t meet remote PHP developers face-to-face! That’s why it makes sense to hire from companies like DevTeam.Space.

C. Focus on skills in libraries and built-in modules

You want your team to be productive. Therefore, you should have developers that know how to use PHP to their advantage.

PHP provides excellent library support. This helps you with data representation. The language also has built-in database connection modules. They help you to connect with databases. Look for programmers with a thorough knowledge of libraries and built-in modules.

Examples of coding questions to ask when you hire a PHP developer

Ask PHP programming language questions that test the hands-on knowledge of candidates. A few examples are as follows:

A. Show a few examples of comparison operators in PHP.

Answer: You can use the PHP comparison operators to compare two different values. The following are a few examples:

• “Equal”: This operator checks if two values are equal after type juggling. The syntax is “$a == $b”.
• “Identical”: You can compare if two values of the same type are equal using this operator. Its syntax is “$a === $b”.
• “Less than”: With this operator, you can check if one value is less than the other. The syntax is “$a < $b”.

B. How can you loop through each key/value pair in a PHP array?

Answer: PHP programmers can use the “PHP foreach loop” for this. The syntax is as follows:

foreach ($array as $value) {
//write the code block that should be executed here
}

PHP assigns the value of the current array element to “$value”. Subsequently, it moves the array pointer by 1. PHP continues this process for each loop iteration until the last element.

C. How do you calculate the total number of days between two dates in PHP?

Answer: Use the following code to calculate the total number of days between two dates:

<?php
$dateX = "2022-02-01"; # date X
$dateY = "2022-02-05"; # date Y

Submit a Project With Zero Risk

PHP is a powerful and versatile language. While it allows you to do a lot, remember that software development using PHP can get complex. You need programmers that know how to navigate such complexities.

Why not take a few minutes and fill out this DevTeam.Space product specification form? A dedicated account manager from DevTeam.Space will then get in touch with you. They will show you how our experienced PHP developers can help you and what benefits you can get from our unique platform.