How to Hire a PHP Developer: A Complete Guide

Site Report Card August 30, 2021

According to some research, 79% of websites have PHP.

If you want to jump in on this trend and use PHP in your business, it might be worth it for you to hire a PHP Developer.

But what is a PHP developer, and how do you hire them? Thankfully, we have the perfect guide to help you out, so make sure you keep reading!

What is PHP?

PHP is an acronym that stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. This is a scripting language that is open source, and developers use it for web applications and dynamic websites.

Originally, it was made to use for personal web pages and to make HTML code. However, now, it is used to offer all kinds of services, options, and features.

If you want to get a little more technical, PHP is different because the code is made on the server and then embedded into the HTML code. After that, it’s sent to the user instead of being on the visitor’s browser.

Because of this, PHP focuses more on the server-side when it comes to the development process. However, you can still use it to write apps for your desktop or across platforms.

PHP will work on almost any operating system, like Mac OS, Linux, and Windows.

What Does a PHP Developer Do?

While this may sound great for your website building, you may not know exactly how to implement it. That’s when you hire a PHP developer!

But what do they do? They’ll have a few different roles and responsibilities, including developing different websites, programs, and applications.

They’ll also work with the project or development team to help find solutions for some difficult software problems.

They’ll be able to do computer programming, write, test, fix, and even maintain software code for your website and all of its pages. If something does go wrong, they can do some website maintenance and fix the source code issues or figure out if there are security problems.

To do all of that, they’ll also need a good understanding of the PHP framework and the back-end development process.

However, they could end up doing way more than this! The role and responsibilities will vary depending on the company and the specific project.

Benefits of Hiring a PHP Developer

You might be asking yourself if it’s really worth hiring a PHP developer even if you know a little bit about coding, and the answer is yes.

There are even more benefits to hiring a PHP developer if you don’t even have your websites set up on PHP.

Faster

Many websites are switching to PHP just because it’s faster. A lot of new software that is coming out uses PHP frameworks to help things load faster.

They load faster because PHP runs on its own memory without relying on anything else.

Saves Money

While hiring new developers and implementing this process might be expensive initially, it’ll save you money in the long run.

You can use open-sourced tools, so you won’t have to pay for expensive tools anymore.

Flexible

There are many features in PHP that also let it be flexible in applying it to almost every project.

It’s very portable, and it can work across different platforms and environments. With all of this, you also have more control and customization.

That’s because PHP is written in between tags in the code. This way, developers don’t have to worry about what’s going into their code, and they can mix or add HTML tags wherever they want.

This combination can leave you with great and fast content on your website.

Know Where to Find PHP Developers

If you want to enjoy all of those benefits, you’ll need to hire PHP developers, and there are a few places you can find them.

You may want to start by looking at job networks, freelance marketplaces, or even consider an outsourcing agency.

Job Networks

You might want to start looking on sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter, or any other site for job postings.

You’ll be able to write a great job ad that you can post and share with millions of developers who are looking for work at a company just like yours.

Freelance Marketplaces

If you don’t think you have the budget to hire someone full-time, you can start by finding a freelancer.

There are also many marketplaces where developers advertise their skills to work on multiple projects at once.

With this, you’ll be able to go through a bunch of different developers and find now that has the skills and experience that you’re looking for. For an added benefit, if you don’t like the work they did, you can hire someone else for the next project.

If you hire a freelancer, you’ll have to pay a flat or an hourly fee, and you won’t have to pay them any benefits.

Outsourcing Agencies

Lastly, you could also outsource all of your work to a different company.

This developer will work as a contractor, and they’ll be working on different other projects as well. These employees could be the cheapest option of the three depending on what company you work with.