Time in the world of web development flows according to its own laws. New technologies appear and change so fast that web developers have to pay due attention to refreshing their professional skills to ensure their code corresponds to the current standards. However, there are always some exceptions from this rule, and certain programming languages cannot complain about the lack of attention from the development community even after decades of existence.

PHP, for example, is a programming language that will celebrate its 30th birthday in 2025. Despite such a considerable age, it remains pretty popular among both beginners and veterans of web development. Today, we’ll look at how PHP competes with other technologies nowadays and how its usage can benefit modern businesses.

How PHP is Used in Web Development

First, we must check if there’s still a place for PHP somewhere else besides the seasoned programmers’ memories of the good old days. The wide set of possibilities that PHP enables, in fact, helps this language to keep the title of one of the most widespread technologies. If your business is looking to implement a dynamic website, PHP development must be considered as one of the viable options, whether you work in a small startup or a large enterprise.

Numbers don’t lie. W3Techs whose main purpose is to provide actual data on the usage of different technologies on the web, shows that at the moment of this writing (mid 2022), PHP code is used by over 77 percent of currently working websites:

Inquisitive minds accustomed to getting to the bottom of things may say “Wait a minute! Only the fact that so many websites use PHP code doesn’t mean that this programming language deserves my attention.” Indeed, PHP is a web development technology that was around for too many years. Because of its popularity and such a long history, PHP just couldn’t disappear without leaving a mark on the surface of the web. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s still relevant.

Read Also Node.js vs PHP. Choosing Between Modernity and Tradition

To resolve the question of its relevance, you can, for example, look at some of the most popular companies that run PHP code. In this list, you can find, for example, Facebook, Wikipedia, Etsy, Slack, Zoom, and Canva. Moreover, this web development technology is the very heart and soul of WordPress. This content management system’s source code mostly consists of PHP. At the moment, WordPress is ranked first among the other CMS solutions with an incredible 43% market share and this is not a coincidence. Back in 2011, it took only 13%, but since then its popularity gradually grew until it reached today’s figures.

How PHP Development Can Benefit Your Business

1. PHP helps to reduce development costs

PHP is open-source and free from any licensing fees, which means a lot in terms of money you’ll have to spend on creating a comprehensive website for your business. The development team can not only write the code for the project but also has the opportunity to see how everything works under the hood to better understand PHP possibilities.

2. PHP saves your time

Whether you want to build a small online marketplace to sell your goods or a complex enterprise-wide resource management system, writing the code and debugging it will take the lion’s share of the time spent on the project. PHP development enables you to create reusable components, which can help to save a lot of time. Also, there’s no shortage of PHP frameworks, which also results in faster development and delivery. If we decide to rank programming languages by the number of frameworks and libraries that appear and vanish every year, apparently, JavaScript will become the absolute champion. However, in terms of quality, such PHP frameworks like Laravel, CodeIgniter, or Symfony can leave many other contestants far behind.

3. PHP doesn’t limit your choice of platforms

PHP allows the development team to write code with due flexibility. It supports all major operating systems, there’s no shortage of servers on which you can deploy your website, and all modern databases can be used in a PHP environment with no effort.

4. PHP enables easy maintenance

Code written with PHP is easy to read and understand. Therefore, when a new bug appears on your website, the chances that a development team will fix it in no time will be pretty high. Even if these programmers didn’t even originally develop the system.

5. Effortless scalability and website modernization

When you grow your business, it expands both physically and digitally. As you enter new markets, you need more employees, warehouses, and vehicles to deliver your goods. The influx of new users requires your website to provide new features and process tons of requests with no issues. PHP helps to deal with all these challenges thanks to extensions and libraries, allowing you to modify the code of your website with ease.

What XB Software Has to Offer

Source: Task Management and Tracking Tool For Creative Industries

 

At XB Software, we have rich expertise in building comprehensive and reliable PHP solutions, including:

Our portfolio includes dozens of completed projects built with PHP and Laravel. If any of them catches your eye and you decide that our expertise in PHP development is exactly what your business needs, contact us. We’ll be happy to discuss your project.