The developer who writes the logic for the server-side web is called a PHP developer. They usually work on the back-end constituents of the server and relate the 3^rd party services with the main software.

PHP developers are also responsible for developing plugins on some framework that supports front-end developers.

PHP is one of the most difficult programming languages. As it imposes extra performance and stability on the developers. So, it is very important for the present IT market.

Although a good grasp and experience of PHP can make your job description better. But if you are a client seeking to Hire PHP developers it will be no that much easy. Your development requirement adds can attract a person who has less knowledge about the subject.

Know Your Project Requirements

The term requirement means a document that specifies the actual needs of a client regarding the product. The client can mention any kind of special feature or design that they want in the end product. Requirements of any type of project can be divided into 3 major groups such as,

1. Business requirements

This type of requirement is done by organizations that have a special vision and scope for their business. Otherwise, the companies use the general BRD (Business Requirements Document).

2. Client and Functional requirements

This segment of the documentation gives an overview to the development team about software. Some organizations use case studies or FRS (Functional Requirements Specifications) to specify their requirements. While the other companies use BRD.

3. External outlook, System, Data, and Security Requirements

It deals with the other aspects of the product regarding interphase, the power of processing data, and the type of security. Some of the clients have special SRS (Software Requirements Specifications) for web application development companies. While normal companies use BRD.

Experience Level

A PHP developer should have a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Applications. Sometimes companies hire undergraduates also, but they should have better skills and knowledge about the subject.

The candidates should have a better grasp of data structure, operating systems, algorithms, and software architecture. You can also apply for other computing certifications to get a boost in your knowledge and gain experience.

Read More:- Why PHP Application Development Works Well For The Enterprise?

A certified and experienced PHP developer always charges more than the usual one. As they will be able to deliver a high-performing, stable, and feature-packed product to their clients.

If you are a fresher in this field, you can be a part of any web development project or any open-source internships. Which can increase your skills and experience as a developer.

Technical Proficiency

An experienced PHP developer usually has a good technical skillset. They have a robust knowledge of the different types of software creating web applications and programming languages. They also know which of the framework can easily create the requested software within the given time frame.

If you hiring a PHP developer you should appoint someone who can verify their knowledge in these fields;

• The candidates applying should have a better knowledge of Ajax, MySQL, and jquery.
• Knowledge of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript is mandatory if you are hiring full-stack development services.
• They should have a better grasp of creating software on different frameworks like APIs, VMS, and Linux.
• Proper skills in Cake PHP and PHP Unit are needed for open source and testing frameworks.
• The ability to think critically and communication skills are needed. This is because a developer with poor communicating skills will not be able to understand the requirements of the client.
• For designing purposes, skills in Photoshop are also needed for PHP developers

Some of the skills like communication and a knack for solving problems are considered soft skills. These skills are personality traits that can neither be changed nor taught. So, skills are checked by the clients as certain personalities will be more eligible for the job than others.

If you are finding a career as a PHP developer it is better to always update your technical skills and learn new upcoming languages. This is because upcoming technologies and programming languages can help you to make better stable and feature-packed products. Plus working on different open-source projects will always increase your skills and experience.

Certifications

There is always a doubt in developers which will be a better certification or hand-to-hand experience. A simple answer to this doubt is you need both certification and experience for a job as a PHP developer.

This is because the certification can only help you to full fill the eligibility criteria for highly demanding companies. Also, you need experienced and knowledgeable in the PHP field to get the job. Having both of these factors can ensure success in this field.

There are several professional certification courses available online, some of them are chargeable and some of them are free. Here are 5 popular certification courses for a PHP developer;

1. W3 School PHP Certification

This course is recommended for beginners as it can give a boost to your knowledge. You will be getting more preferences while changing teams from project to project or getting promoted in the same company.

This school will provide the candidate’s variety of tutorials and mock tests in order to prepare for the examination. You have to clear the exam cut-off to get the course certification. Plus, you can choose the exam center of your choice.

 The syllabus or topics that you should have knowledge of for this exam are

• Functions
• Strings
• Arrays
• Basic Input and Output operations
• Data types, numbers, and constants
• Basics concepts of OOP
• Switch Loops
• Control statements and operators

2. PHP Developers Certification

Many PHP development company offers certified coarse through LinkedIn. You will be charged on monthly basis not as per the course. After the completion of each course, you will gain a badge that you can use for applying to different recruiting companies through LinkedIn. Name of some of the courses you can learn are;

• OOP
• Ajax and its dynamic contents
• Creation of web application on MVC framework
• Securing a website with the help of PHP
• All about PHP Unit and GitHub
• Basics of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

3. PHP Certification Coarse for Intermediate learners

This certification is conducted by the University of Michigan. The candidate will have the privilege to learn and be mentored by experienced and esteemed professionals.

This program is mainly dependent on 4-course web development series. Moreover, they provide you a 7 day free trial so that they can be sure.

You will be charged on monthly basis and will gain access to various scored assignments and tests. Some topics on which you will gain knowledge if you opt for these courses are,

• HTTP request and response
• HTML
• CSS
• POST
• Integration of SQL and PHP in the MAMP environment
• All the topics on PHP including variables, error correction, forms, arrays, iterations, etc.

4. Zend Certified PHP Engineers

It is a worldwide certification that helps the client company to select good PHP developers. Zend also conducts all stages of PHP classes for preparing the candidates for the examination.

You can apply for the classes or you can self-study for the examination if you have experience. You can opt for the graded mock assignment and test by paying $19.95 which will help to measure your preparation.

Here are the syllabus topics for the examination;

• Data formats and types of XML JSON and SOAP
• All topics of OOP and HTTP including status codes, interface, and inheritance.
• Input and Output of different functions including context and streams.
• Customizing security with SQL, API, and other languages.
• Different works of the array and its types
• Handling any kind of PHP errors.

5. Udemy Certification of advanced to beginners Courses

Like the certification courses, it offers 3 stages of learning PHP development services i.e., beginners, intermediate and advanced.  The certification will be given from Udemy. Here are some topics which are covered in 3 stages

• All topics under PHP including keyword operation, switch statement, loop function, and database administration.
• Topics under SQL including update and insertion various records, and defining and managing user administration.
• Using PHPMyAdmin for integrating MySQL
• Both the MVC core and VMS workflow topics
• Setting up authentication processes for the users
• CRUD access along with post control and app deployment.
• OOP and other language integration coding.

All of the courses mentioned above are popular, dependable, and allow faster completion with valuable certificates.

Communication Fluency

Having fluency in communication is very important for a PHP developer. Otherwise, they can face problems while understanding the requirements of the client.

The project with complex features has specialized documentation. Following the documentation and satisfying the client will become impossible if the developer is not good at communication skills.

Check the Developer’s Portfolio

Checking a specific developer’s portfolio is very tricky. As there are many companies that will not be able to share the portfolio of the developers working on your project. So, it’s better to choose a web development company that can maintain 100% transparency with the client.

It is best to ask the companies for the portfolio of the developers working on your project. Also, ask them what coding and technologies are used in your project.

If possible, go through the case study of your project and clarify your doubts with the development company. This is the best way to get a total overview of your project.

Benefits of Hiring PHP Developers

PHP is the most widely used server-side programming language for scripting and developing web applications. With the help of PHP developers can create a website framework, management system, content, and template system.

Moreover, the smart business owner always goes for outsourcing the development of the software to overseas companies. This saves time and money with increasing efficiency.

1. Hassle-less Recruitment

A PHP developer is a person who already gained experience by working on different development projects. There is no need of following the tiering process recruitment, only testing the ability of the developer to fix an error is enough. Instead of focusing on recruitment, you can look after the other aspects of your business.

2. Proper Testing and Implementation

One of the very important stages of the development process is testing and implementation. PHP developers start this phase after the development of the webpage is done.

They usually test the coding done on the web application and design portion. If they found any kind of failure or error in the software, they try to fix it. A good PHP developer can fix problems by implementing different error-fixing techniques.

3. Delivery on the specific timeframe

If you are outsourcing your web application development project to an overseas developing company. You don’t have to worry about whether the product will be delivered within the given timeframe or not. This is because development companies take their time agreement very seriously.

Moreover, you can get a constant update on the process by communicating with the development team. Usually, the PHP developers will be able to deliver your product before the agreed time.

4. Budget-Friendly

If you set up a home development team of PHP developers you have to pay them even though they have no project to work on. This process can take a huge number of investments.

But if you outsource your project to a development company, they will create a team that will only focus on your project. Plus, you don’t have to pay each and every employee for your project, just to the company. Thus, you can save more money if you outsource your project

5. Better maintenance and overview 

Developers working on your project will keep you in the loop during the development process. Full transparency will be given to clients at each and every stage of development. A good development company can ask you for client feedback on each and every stage of the development process.

Easy access to the product

A well-established developer company will always give their client full access to the project. You as a client will be able to monitor the improvement and set-back from anywhere in the world.

Plus, a better web development company will always provide you with 24X7 client services. Where you can communicate with the development team if you have any doubts regarding the project.

High skilled Programmers

Development companies usually have a strict process of recruiting coders and developers. So, you can be assured your project will be handled by qualified and well-deserving developers. They can develop your software to be more stable in the changing environment and have a better processing speed of data.

Steps to Hire PHP Developers

A Development company always need a team of good PHP developer who will be the face of the company. As it is an open-source web framework that can create a dynamic web application.

It is very tough to find and hire an available PHP developer in today’s scenario. Here are some of the basic steps to hire a developer with your available resources,

Step 1– Finding out which type of PHP developer is best for your requirements

Basically, there are two types of PHP developers, who are specialized in two major portions of the development process

1. Platform-driven development – They are specialized in developing web platforms and improving shopping portals. So, if you have projects related to e-commerce websites and applications you can hire PHP developers who are specialists in Platform-driven development.
2. CMS-Drive web development – They are hired exclusively for developing and maintaining Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress and Drupal. In order to hire a suitable web developer first, you have to understand the requirement. Plus, categorize the requirements and mention them specifically in the job description.

Step 2- Websites to find a dedicated PHP developer

You have to spend most of the time in this step. As you have gone through sites like Clutch, Fiverr, and Upwork for finding dedicated PHP developers.

These sites will provide you seamless experience in choosing the best developer available. Moreover, you will be able to see the qualifications and past experience of the developers.

There are other tech-based Q&A platforms where you can ask and search for available developers. Such as Mogul, GitHub, Stack-overflow, and Meetup. You can post your job hunt ads on these websites along with specific requirements and wait to get responses.

Step 3- Testing the skills of the PHP developer

After creating a list of suitable candidates, you have to test their coding and development skills. You can give them situational errors and observe the way they are solving or fixing the problems.

You also have to note the attitude and behavior of the candidates while going through any critical situations. The candidates who were able to fix the given problem in the given time span will be eligible for the last round.

Step 4- Conducting a personal face-to-face interview

After short-listing candidates from the testing round. You can arrange a face-to-face personal interview. Where you will communicate with candidates to know more about them, their knowledge of the subject, and expectance.

Plus, while communicating you will come to know whether the candidate has good communication skills and will fit perfectly in your project or not. The selected candidates should have a better grasp of PHP and SQL or PHP and WordPress.

Technical Interview Questions

Before the face-to-face personal interview, you can conduct a technical round to ensure that the candidates have good technical knowledge. Also, this stage will help you to get full clarity on whether the candidate is suitable for your specific project. Some of the topics that help you conduct this stage are;

1. What are the ways for enabling error reports in PHP?
2. What are composers and their benefits?
3. How can you use the HTTP header in PHP?
4. Define 3 level scopes present in PHP and ways to define them.
5. What are the ways of comparing objects in PHP?
6. How to use the different conditional operators in PHP?
7. Compare the advantages and disadvantages of sessions and cookies.
8. How to use echo and print commands in PHP?
9. How constants are used in PHP?
10. Difference between constructor() and destructor() in PHP?
11. How to change a constant during the execution of the Script?
12. Define traits and their uses.
13. Define the importance of both getter and setter in PHP.
14. State and define the different components of MVC.
15. What are the ways of preventing SQL injections?
16. Define PSRs and describe their different components.
17. Definitions of  the function include()
18. Define the function require()

Most Important Hard Skills for PHP Developers

In order to receive the best possible product, you should hire a skilled and experienced PHP developer. In this competitive market, PHP developers are hired according to the success of their previous complex work.

If you have to ensure the PHP developers hired are suitable for your project or not. You can look for their experience in the following hard skills;

• The developer hired should have a greater grasp of frameworks like JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.
• The appointed developer should be a good team leader. Plus, should have the ability to assign work to the correct person on the development team.
• They should know how to use different development and libraries during the development process.
• The developer should be able to handle different tasks simultaneously.
• The hired developer should have a very good communication skill set. So that they can understand the client’s requirements and deliver the correct product.

Conclusion

Hiring PHP development services for your business will ensure the way to success in this competitive market. You just have to search for a suitable developer with a better skill set and stay away from fraud companies.