Blog Directory

After all, the success of your business resides on your virtual appearance. So, it is necessary to select your PHP development company carefully. I will tell you here some questions to ask before hiring any professional PHP Development Company if they are good enough for your company or not. Let’s take a look on some of the most important questions.

1. Ask about their experience. How old their company is? What projects have they done? Their staff capacity and which industry they cater?

2. Ask about their expertise. Their PHP developers’ skills, experience, and qualification?

3. What tools and technology they use and will they upgrade the PHP software according to the latest version?

4. Which framework they use and what will be their delivery models?

5. What is their communication mode? Will their developer or project manager be available for any assistance?

6. Ask for them to show their brief portfolio and previous work was done?

7. Provide them with the details for the targeted audience like age group, region, qualification, interests, industry etc.

8. Tell them the nature of your business and what is your plan to achieve through your web development project.

9. Who are your industry competitors and how will they help you stand out among them?

10. Do you have any theme, style, functionalities in your mind or want the web development company to come up with some outstanding ideas?

11. Are you revamping your existing site? If yes then how will they re-create it? Or do you want to develop it from scratch?

12. Where your website will be hosted and will you have the full access to the c-panel and FTP logins?

13. Will they outsource any other developer for your PHP website?

14. How much is your budget and what are their packages?

15. Do they have the right server with enough space, bandwidth, databases etc. capable enough to provide the necessary infrastructure to the website you intend to build?

16. Will you provide them the content for your PHP site or would like to get their content services?

17. What will be the expected timeline for your PHP web project?

18. Do you need a fluid-width website or fixed-width website front end development?

19. Which CMS you need and which e-commerce shopping cart and with what kind of payment mode?

20. Is blogging necessarily for my website?

21. Will they make responsive PHP website which is optimized for mobile devices?

21. Do they give on-going SEO services? Do you want to use any of your keywords to high rank your website in search engines?

There’s more

Apart from all these necessary questions, there are some other important details to ask like payment, post-development support, and security. These questions will surely help you in the filtering process for selecting any offshore PHP Development Company.

Read Here: Why You Should Migrate From PHP 5 to PHP 7

Making a choice is definitely not an easy task. Well bear in mind the definition and purpose of your website, what is your complete budget and what is your own level of expertise or your Joomla / Drupal Web developer.

We hope this guide will clear your head and make your decision be an easier one.

Read here: Advantages Of Drupal Development

Understand that the website acts as a window to provide an insight of your business to the customers. The website the web development company is going to design will play an important part in your company to achieve the desired marketing goals. Whether you are designing your website for the first time or revamping it, your hiring decision for the world’s best Web Design and Development Company will dictate your website success.

With multiple options of the web design companies and each claiming to be the best, makes the choice difficult as which one is the right fit for your business. The perfect and the best approach is to adopt a thorough hiring process. Just like hiring a new employee, interview your web design firm to, ask questions, review performance, request for portfolio and check references.

To help you, we brought here 20 interview questions to ask before hiring any web design company. This questionnaire session will help you and the company to get to know each other’s business well, your targeted audience and the objective for your websites. This will help the company to utilize their skills and develop the plan in a way to achieve your online business goals.

So here we go:

1: What services do they offer?

Commonly it assumes that a web design company offers web development, hosting, copywriting, e-commerce solutions, digital marketing services like SEO, social media or PPC management are related to each other whereas, in fact, these are different services from each other which require the different skillset.

Never assume that a company is good at one thing just because they are offering another. Almost every web design and development company are now offering digital marketing services too but don’t rely on them and let them handle all the digital work unless you get a solid, the desired result.

2: Do you make Custom Web Design or use Themes?

Web design and development companies offer both the options to satisfy their client needs. Some go for unique look and functionality built from scratch whiles others goes for the template to customize and save money. Discuss what you need for your website and compare the prices of both options before making any move.

3: Can you provide the Portfolio?

Looking at the examples of the previously created websites by the web design company will help you evaluate the design diversity. Also check for the performance of their developed website while looking their portfolio, like site navigation, is the website well-crafted, are the designs modern, see if the design matches with the business.

4: Do you provide case studies to showcase the results of your web designs?

Your website is not about only the online presence of your business but it should also get a return on investment and have the website deliver business results.

For that, ask for case studies. The case studies will provide you specific results like increased online sales, increased the lead and boosted conversion rate in certain time period.

5: What strategies will be used to revenue for your site?

The Web Design and Development Company you choose to design your website should be concerned about generating revenue for your website too. They should provide a genuine list of strategies that can be incorporate into a site design.

These result-oriented strategies must be matched with your goals like proper placement of your business contact information, an eye-catching slideshow on the homepage features products and sales properly placed on every page of the website and prominent of CTAs to catch the visitor’s attention.

6: Will they Review your Current Website to analyze the performance before designing the New One?

Firstly find out if your website design company plans to analyze the current site’s metrics to evaluate the strength and weaknesses before making any design changes.

7: What is their policy for building websites in comparison with your competitors?

It is the most important question to ask and to use in the evaluation process. This can either be a good or bad thing, if the company has designed the website in the past similar to yours, they might have some better knowledge of what works the best and what doesn’t.

8: How will they handle your project?

A website design and development process includes research, design, site development, and launch and evaluate. While asking the questions, do remember to ask who will be the specific person you will be in touch with, what will be the timelines for the different phases in the development process, in which way you will get progress reports and is there any project management system going to manage the tasks.

9: How much time required to analyze the business, market and the competitors?

Planning out the website is the key to ensure its success. It requires researching in the industry, do a basic market analysis, before planning the functionality, content structure, element, and other things.

10: Who will be working on your website and what is their qualification?

Make sure you know every individual of the team who is working on your website project to understand how your project will be managed.

Also, it is important to know the experience level of your web project team along with the updated portfolio and references of their latest work.

11: How long will it take to complete the Website?

Typically the website project timeline depends on the work required and how fast you can provide them with the required information. It will be worthy to discuss what they will do if they don’t meet their deadline.

12: How many pages will the Website Contains?

Search engines love the websites which contain various pages and rich content. Normally a website has About Us, Contact Us, FAQs, and Terms & Conditions and other pages like blogs, services, testimonials, products will be decided according to your business type.

13: What will you require from me and will you create the logo for my site?

Obviously, you are going to provide the Web Design and Development team the text, images, content and other required things for your site and if you want the content to be done by the web design company’s copywriters then you need to give them a brief detail about the nature of your work.

Ask you Web Design Company how appealing they can make the logo for your website, seek for their experience in this area and look for their other logos created by them.

14: Will they help you get the Images for your Website? & will they outsource any of the work?

Providing real pictures for your business is the best to get that unique factor in your website but in case if you don’t have any then ask the web design firm if they access to the public domain images or you need to pay royalty fees for it.

Often web design companies outsource for the certain phases of your web project. If they do so, then ask for all the necessary details of them and how project coordination will be handled in-house.

15: What will be their price and what is included in their price?

The pricing structure is of two types, flat project price, and second hourly rate. But do understand that prices depend on experience, expertise, and scope of the project.

The second most important thing to ask is that what are the items included in the prices and what is not.

Read here How you can set budget for your website

16: Will your website be compatible with every screen?

Find out the most important factor and that is whether your website is responsive and compatible enough with smartphones, tablets and mobile devices or not.

17: Do they build search engine optimization into the websites?

Nowadays every websites are coded with SEO in mind. So if you are designing a new website, it’s better to get a third party SEO firm do an SEO audit prior to launch to ensures that there are no technical issues.

18: How do they determine keywords for the site? & do they perform other SEO services?

To have the right keywords on every page of your website is the necessary SEO marketing component. It would be great for the third party SEO firm to not only do a site audit but also the keyword study.

Ask your web design company about the experience as who will be providing SEO and SEM services and the strategies applied.

19: What kind of CMS do they use?

Ask them about the type of CMS used either third-party system of the custom built one. Also find out if it’s web based interface supports WordPress and other e-commerce platforms, compatible with all browsers.

If you do not know how to use the live CMS then ask if they offer training for it.

20: What web standards and practices do they follow?

A web design and development company should follow latest design trends and web development standards so that your website functions in all web browsers and operating systems.

Wrapping it up

Well here are some major questions you should ask before hiring any web design company and ensures you get a result-oriented partner to help you get the desired results which can give a measurable return on your website investment.

Read Here: Is It the Right Time to Revamp Your Website

With the tough competition going on and the tendency to produce something innovative for the customers, the  web development companies are now focusing on using cutting-edge technologies to develop custom applications. To develop any application, the first thing you need to understand is the nature of your business in order to deploy the application which is suitable for your business. And the second most thing is the selection of the best technology platform for the development process.

With the continuous change and demand in the technology market, Microsoft created Asp.Net Framework to create feature rich websites and web applications. Active server pages or Asp, is the perfect platform for creating high-end applications. Dot Net is the best server side scripting technology where Windows web server is used to host Asp.Net websites and web applications.

Introducing Asp by Microsoft corporation is one of the biggest achievement as to meet the market demand of dynamic web pages which can be viewed on different web browsers. With dot net you can create reliable and reusable applications. The Asp.Net framework is a highly popular one and relatively easy for the .Net developers to create compelling Asp.net applications by using Visual Studio. Well the good part is, it is not only limited to Asp but also give the advantage to the developers to make use of other programming languages like C#, VB etc.

Let’s take a look at some key advantages of using Asp.Net Framework

1: Keep you Asp.net applications secured with the built-in Windows authentication and per-application configuration.

2: Asp.Net has reduced the long lines of code required to develop large applications.

3: Asp.Net and Html, together generate dynamic web pages smoothly.

4: Being an ideal server-side scripting technology, Asp.Net code first runs on Windows server before displaying on the web browser.

5: Asp.Net framework is language independent, means you can choose any programming language which best suited to you application.

6: With the built-in configuration information, Asp.Net is easy to deploy.

7: The windows web server thoroughly monitors the web pages, multiple components, and applications running over it.

8: The Dot Net Framework quickly gives an alert for memory leaks, unbounded loops, and other wrong behaviors, immediately killing them and restart them over again.

9: Asp.Net features like early binding, JIT compilation, caching services and native optimization supports gives your application the high level of performance.

10: All the Asp.Net applications are highly monitored and managed to help application available to handle requests.

11: The best part of Dot Net Framework is it has its own built-in caching features.

12: The content and the program logic are separated in the .Net Framework, thus reducing the program inconveniences.

Microsoft Asp.Net Framework is a widely used development framework for building enterprise level web applications, that today’s developers love to use. The Dot Net technology offers immeasurable benefits for various issues like memory management, security, and exceptional handling, a developer may face. The above-mentioned advantages made Asp.Net Framework an ideal choice for developing .Net Application Development. So what are you still waiting for? Let’s get started with this next-generation platform! And if we missed out any of the other advantages of .net, then do let us know in the comment below.

Read here Top 4 ASP.NET Trends For 2017

The official PHP manual is the comprehensive guide on PHP programming. The manual almost covers everything from basics to the implementation of security and other PHP functions. Though the manual is not that interactive or attractive but it is the best guide out there. It’s simple structure and easy-to-understand layout is even accessible from mobile devices. If you want to know about anything and by anything I mean it, you will find in this guide.

2: PHP Tutorial by Tizag

For PHP reference material, PHP Tutorial by Tizag is an ideal resource which mainly focuses on the definition of PHP, commands and methods for using. You better keep it bookmarked, because you will be needing this tutorial especially when doing the practical coding since it serves as a direct reference just like a textbook.

3: PHP 101

As per the name, PHP 101 is designed while keeping the absolute beginner in mind. If you are a beginner and learning PHP from scratch then this guide is designed for you. The site consists entertaining and useful tutorials with clear, concise and completely easy-to-understand content especially for the beginners. Once you are done with the whole tutorial, you will be able to create a simple RSS news aggregator. The only thing this tutorial lacks is the non-availability of screenshots.

4: Killer PHP

This Killer PHP tutorial is specifically for the videos. It’s a hands-on tutorial. Just dive in, learn usable PHP skills and dive out. That’s it. Each section of the tutorial has a complimentary video in the end though not that which you will call of a high-caliber. Killer PHP is one of those eccentric wild cards that turns out to be the most useful one.

5: The Learn PHP Tutorial

The learn PHP tutorial is the perfect guide for the beginners. Consists list of downloadable videos that will make you walk through the basics of PHP. Ideal for beginners and offers an interactive visual guide. You will not only learn PHP but will also learn what you can do more with the examples and best practices.

6: PHP Tutorial by W3CSchool

The guide PHP Tutorial by W3CSchool is similar to PHP Tutorial by Tizag. The whole style and presentation is almost identical. But that doesn’t mean the guide is useless. In fact it can be used as a reference. This online guide is free to learn and also offers certification that costs around 95$.

7: PHPBuddy

The online guide PHPBuddy contains online tutorials, lessons and articles on PHP programming. It is full of texts and with limited videos and screenshots. But don’t get scare away with it, it is still one of the worthy reference.

8: CodeCourse

Formerly known as PHP Academy, Codecourse contains highly descriptive content. The tutorial is not only limited to PHP but also teach other web development tools and languages. So if you are a beginner and starting with PHP, this tutorial is the perfect match for you. Their tutorials are available on their official site as well as on YouTube.

9: SitePoint PHP

The SitePoint PHP is a modern approach as its guides and tutorials are displayed in the article-like format. It is best for beginners but great for intermediate and pros to help them stay up-to-date with the latest PHP trends.

10: TutorialsPoint PHP

Like other tutorials, TutorialsPoint PHP has a whole entire section dedicated only to PHP programming with guides and lessons ideal for beginners and intermediate levels. The tutorial even also offers an ebook for free download as a PDF file.

11: PHP 5 Power Programming

The PHP 5 Power Programming is basically an eBook for PHP beginners, intermediate and advanced programmers to download it for free. The eBook is completely free and you do not need to pay unless you want the print version which cost money.

12: Hacking With PHP

Formerly known as Practical PHP Programming, Hacking with PHP consist of different chapters breaking down into separate topics and elements, giving an overview of the language with brief introduction and some practical exercises with additional links to resources.

13: PHP The Right Way

The tutorial PHP The Right Way is completely dedicated to PHP coding. The site consists of extensive tutorials on a variety of PHP topics and multiple references to other good practice tutorials and sites. This online tutorial may consist of old and outdated information for the advanced coders / programmers.

14: PHP Academy

The perfect online site for visual learners to see the coding and result live. The PHP Academy YouTube channel is a great platform for those who are looking for something specific in PHP. The best part about the site is that its content gets updated not daily but weekly.

15: PHP Video Tutorials

This site offers PHP online tutorial with the minimum length of 6 to 22 mins, depending on the chapter. Comparing with the other online tutorial, the site may lack in some ways for teaching PHP development, but still a worthy one for beginners.

16: Develop PHP

The Develop PHP site consists a variety of online PHP tutorials for beginners to intermediate and even for the advanced level. The videos are basically hosted via YouTube and embedded on the site, but the develop PHP site provides an easier and organized way to pull up any course.

17: Bento PHP Resources

Like Treehouse, Lynda and Code School, Bento PHP Resources is also an online coders library. Consisting of specialized PHP resources which will help you go through easy, hard and medium tutorials for beginners and expert level coders.

18: VideoPHP Blog

No matter whether you are a beginner or to intermediate level, dive into this VideoPHP Blog resource created by Jefferey Way from ThemeForest. But what if you are an advanced coder, well the online tutorial has other areas for you with plenty of additional resources.

19: PHP Jabbers

This online tutorial is a gem for intermediate to advanced coders.  PHP Jabbers contain a lot of specialized guides for intermediate to advanced PHP coders. This will help in learning and creating a PHP calendar to setting up a custom Captcha system.

20: Microsoft Azure PHP Tutorials and Documentation

Microsoft Azure PHP Tutorial is all about cloud computing. The site contains PHP tutorials and documentation related to Azure with some hidden gems in it. If you are easy to work with Azure, then this site is a perfect place for you.

The End of the Massive List

Well, I hope you are able to find at least one resource to get you started with PHP programming or help you give a better shape to your PHP skills.

If you like to learn in a class-style format, then you should check out online code schools like Lynda, Treehouse or Code School.

Here You Can Find Top 7 Best Books to Learn PHP Programming

So if you have planned to build or revamp your existing website with Drupal CMS development then it is time to make another challenging decision i.e choosing the web development company for the Drupal Development.

Keep in mind that every Drupal developer has different and unique skills and capabilities. One Drupal developer may offer a lot more than the other and vice versa. Thus it is important to make the right decision.

This article here will help you in making the right selection by checking few basics but important factors while choosing any web development company for the Drupal development.

Skilled, Professional & Certified

The Drupal Development Company you have selected to hire for your Drupal CMS development should be capable enough to execute the whole project in an efficient manner and have enough experience to manage and handle the project of any sizes.

Experimental attitude would be a plus point. Experimenting with the ideas is the essential element for achieving success in the virtual world.

Work Experience

One should check the Drupal Development Company previous working experience before hiring them. Contact their previous customers, see their portfolio of work, and check their developers working experiences in this field.

Reputation is only made by contented customers and quality work will always leave a trail of satisfied and happy customers.

Active Drupal Community

Drupal is an open-source platform and has a large active community. Choose that Drupal development company who is active within the Drupal community, they will definitely have their organization’s key personnel profile on it. You can check their previously done projects, their outcome and the remarks and comments of the previous customers.

Maintenance & Technical Support

The development of Drupal website is not all that a Drupal website development company should be capable of because the website requires constant monitoring and regular update.

A professional Drupal Development company should provide round-the-clock maintenance and technical support services.

Drupal as their Specialty

When any web development company claims of being “Drupal specialist”, ensures their claim.

The Drupal CMS developers should be a team of front-end, back-end developers, site architecture, site builders, themes etc and should be specialized in the framework. Since the success of the web development projects relies on the team, Drupal development should be their specialty than another framework.

Conclusion

Considering these factors will help you choose the right Web development Company for the Drupal development.

Magento is an open source CMS but it is considered one of the most complex eCommerce platforms. Comparing Magento with its competitors like Opencart & Shopify, Magento stands out among them in terms of SEO, user interface, customization, types,  automation & shipments of products and some more features.

The complexity in Magento arises when it’s the time for setting it up and operating it independently.  Here in this article, I am going to explain how to hire a certified Magento developer and what key points you need to keep in mind while looking for a Magento Developer.

The list of things needs to be considered is given below.

One Time v/s Ongoing Magento Project

So are you in search for someone to fix one thing in your Magento store or for someone who can make ongoing changes?

This is something important to consider because developers might not be available for fixing small things and can only work on long term projects.

While hiring a Magento developer for ongoing changes, ensures that they are fully available to work. Because developers prefer to work with long term commitment and wouldn’t like to work on small projects.

In all the case, the best thing to do is to test the Magento developer with small projects. If you are happy with the kind of work they deliver, hire them!

Magento Development Agency v/s Magento Freelancer

Freelancers are best for doing small work. Because a person cannot have all the skills and abilities in comparison to a group of skilled, experienced people.

You can hire multiple freelancers for different tasks, but you’ll find difficulty in managing them all. Whereas on the other hand, a Magento development agency has a bunch of dedicated professionals along with the project manager who will make sure you get all the required facilities with the best quality under one roof.

In short, a Magento development agency can do a far better job than a freelancer.

List Down all the Expertise you Expect from your Magento Developer.

Before hiring Magento developer, find out their brief background. It’s the most important thing to know what kind of experience, knowledge and skills your developer possess.

The 3 main question you must ask from your Magento developer are:

1. What framework will he choose to work on?
2. Does he have the sound knowledge of your desired framework?
3. Is he really aware with all the latest Magento technology?

Where to Find the Magento Developers?

You now must be clear about the kind/type of the Magento developer you need, now it’s time to find the best Magento developer.

•         Your Own Circle

Your personal network is the best place to ask for a good Magento developer. Ask from your friends, colleagues if they know any and are happy with.

Hire someone who has been tested before so the chances of project failure will be less.

•         Magento Solution Partners

The Magento Official Development Company has their own Magento solution partner community who can help in all kinds of Magento implementations and solutions. They are professionals offering Magento support, training and services.

•         Magento Certification Directory

If you are looking for skilled Magento developers then you need to check Magento Certification Directory. They have here all the certified Magento developers. The difference between Solution Partners and Certification Direction is here you find Magento skilled people not Magento development companies.

•         Freelance Websites

Websites for freelancers like oDesk, Elance have thousands of freelance Magento developers.  All you need to do is simply post up your job there and it will show a list of interested Magento developers.

•         Magento Events

Magento Industry Events is a big platform for serious, skilled and professional  Magento developers to network with others and learn about the latest changes in the Magento framework.

•         Social Platforms

Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are the great source to find Magento developers. For twitter use #Magento and #MagentoJobs to search for. On Linkedin, you can search directly for Magento developers and can join Magento Developers group. The same goes for Facebook.

Summary

Finding the best Magento developer is not that easy, but a little bit of effort can bear the fruit. Well, this article is here to guide you in the search for the right Magento developer.

From past 14 years, Asp.net has marked its name as one of the best web development technologies and developers considers it the best offer from Microsoft. Asp.net has the best features and functionalities to help your business grow. Each year new trends emerge to enhance the development phase of new technologies. Here I’m going to discuss some key trends of Microsoft .net application development services beneficial for both developers and businesses for the year 2017.

The Big Revamp

Microsoft .Net Development has given us all a big surprise by announcing asp.net core 1.0 which is not any similar to asp.net 4.6 but a whole new framework. Well, it does contain same elements of Asp.net we have been familiar with but on the other hand, it has become smaller and modular. This change happens due to the portability but it took development to the next level.

The major advantage of the core Asp.net is it supports more languages, making things easier for developers.

Mobile Development

Developing a mobile app using asp.net was nearly an impossible task. Declined by the windows based smartphones and tablets had nearly ended the enthusiasm for mobile development. But it’s 2017 and things have been changed and taken U-turns. New advancements and improvements in this .net framework will see more of mobile development in the upcoming years. The core .net platform will be used to develop apps for not only just for Android but also for iOS platforms.

IoT & Big Data

From the past few years, Internet of things (IoT) and Big Data gathered too much attention. Big organizations are looking for large volumes of data to get an insight and make informed decisions in real time. Well in 2017, we will get to see more asp.net development as the platform helps businesses capitalize on the big data and IoT technology. One can get the advantage of highly flexible and scalable IoT and big data-based solutions by combining Asp.net with IIS server. This will help you to grow your business by achieving the desired goals.

Cloud Services

From the past few years, cloud services have gained a lot of fame and it really takes no time to move your data and applications to the cloud. Microsoft has strongly marketed their Azure Cloud Services and this year we can expect major and a big change. .Net applications are now being developed and implemented in the cloud. Here’s another good news, it is now possible to create multi-tier .net applications which got Asp.net MVC as front end and deploy it on the cloud. These applications will be using Azure SQL database, the Azure Blob service, and Azure Queue Service.

Conclusion.

With this new release of .net development and the demand for better UX especially on the mobile, Asp .Net development will definitely lead the way in this new era thus helping online businesses to interact with their audiences. So if you want to get the best out of your .net development, we are here to help you out with the latest trends of Asp.net with the help of our experts. Write to us in the comment section below about these latest trends of Asp.net and let us know if you know any.

Read here Top 12 Advantages of ASP.NET Framework