A guide for hiring top-quality PHP developers for your web development

It is undeniable that PHP is one of the most widely used languages on the web today. It remains the ultimate choice for every organization needing a robust, scalable, and customizable website or application. A PHP developer's or a PHP development company's ability to bring you good results with optimum agility is crucial to your success. PHP is a scripting language that's just a means to an end.

Qualities of a good PHP developer

Selecting a perfect PHP development company for your web development from over five million+ PHP development is challenging and even more daunting if you're a non-technical person. A good PHP developer usually commands frameworks such as Laravel, Yii, CodeIgniter, Zend, Symfony, Kohana, CakePHP, Joomla, etc.

The essential qualities of every good PHP developer posses are –

•  Knowledge of PHP programming language

•  Ability to work with SQL/ My SQL databases;

•  Knowledge of HTML and CSS;

• Knowledge of control systems (SVN/ Git);

• Experience with frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, and YII2;

•  Hands-on with CMS like Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress;

•  Knowledge of OOP (object-oriented programming).

Criteria of the job

Hiring a professional is a crucial task as the quality of the work depends on them. While hiring from the endless number of developers, your decision must depend on –

•  How active are you at hiring?

• The number of developers does you need for your job?

•  How many experienced developers do you expect?

•  Flexibility of the job (on-site/ remote/hybrid)

• How much are you willing to pay?

Sites to discover

If you've got plenty of time to spend on finding an eligible developer for your web development, then the best-recommended sites for you are –

• Stack Overflow

• Github

  These sites are the trendiest among the developers who share their expertise and network with other technical individuals. These sites can prove to be the perfect place for hiring. Top-level companies like Google also recruit from such sites.

But if you lack time, you might go with traditional job portals like:

• Career Builder

•  Indeed

•  Glassdoor

•  LinkedIn

•  Monster

But if you want to avoid the hassle of in-house hiring along with quality developers, you might use these platforms –

• Toptal

• Hired

•  Stack Overflow

• Github Jobs

You can also consider staffing companies in India and Poland to hire a good and well-experienced web developer at no extra cost.

Technical inquiry to check developer's capabilities.

After selecting a site to hire on, there should be a checklist of queries curated to check the developer's abilities. Listed below are some of the questions that you can ask –

What is the difference between a session in PHP and a cookie? Where are sessions located in PHP?

The use of Sessions is to store data. The user's data is held against a unique session ID. These IDs are sent to the browser via session cookies, and the ID is used to recover session data. Cookies, unlike sessions, are used as a means to store data in the end-user's browser to track the end-user. The actual data from sessions are not stored on the browser. Instead, it is stored in the user's session record on the server.

What are the various types of errors in PHP?

Notice errors

Warning errors usually don't stop the execution of the script. It occurs when the user attempts to access an undefined variable.

Parse errors (Syntax error)

Parse errors occur as a result of a syntax error. This error interrupts the execution of the script. It can occur due to many reasons in PHP. Commonly –

• Open quotes

•  Missing semicolon

•  Open braces

•   Missing or extra parentheses

  Fatal errors –

This error usually occurs when you try to access an undefined function. It creates a situation where PHP knows what you have written but can't do it. It stops the execution of the entire script.

  Warning errors –

These are similar to notice errors. Like notice errors, it does not stop the execution of the script. It occurs due to missing files and incorrect parameters in a function.

Differentiate between include, require, include once, and require once ()?

If a required file is missing, a fatal error occurs on PHP but only emits a warning in case of include. Include () shows an alert if it cannot have a file. The rest of the script runs – include once, require once.

Differentiate between unset () and unlink ().

Unlink is a file system handling function in PHP. It is used to delete files. If you want to delete a file from coding, you can use the unlink () function to delete it. In contrast, unset () is a variable management function used to undefined a variable.

Explain constructor and destructor in PHP.

Constructor is a unique PHP function that turns on automatically whenever there is a formation of an object from a class. On the other hand, destructor is another particular PHP function that is automatically called if the object is deleted or goes out of scope.

Conclusion

You've learned about the various sources and tactics to hire a perfect PHP development company for developing your website. Here are a few things you should keep in mind to avoid inefficiency while hiring -

• Avoid cliched questions. Instead, ask stereotypical questions that would help you know if the developer is suitable for your task.

• Investigate their past experiences and projects

• Analyze their level of knowledge and skills

• Check confidence and communication skills.

• Look for a positive attitude instead of a reluctant one.

You can find the perfect web developer to meet your needs by keeping these points in mind.