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Modern PHP Applications that Scale

PHP has a bad rap

I’ll be honest here. PHP has a bad rap and it isn’t without justification. It is old for web languages. Its original intent wasn’t for building applications or creating a new programming language. It has language design quirks. It allows for poor design and is one of the first languages many self-taught programmers learn.

But…

It’s also mature.

PHP has never been the darling of serious web application developers, but it has grown to become a mature, robust, flexible, performant, and highly scalable tool to grow a software product. The latest versions of PHP routinely beat Ruby and Python in performance. The community continues to be focused, passionate and driven. New frameworks, services, platforms, and integrations are released every day that are well-tested and maintained.

80% of the web is written in PHP

PHP has never been to be the most elegant solution. Its goal has always been to serve a functional purpose. This is a big reason why we are in a place where PHP continues to power a large majority of the web.

The biggest web frameworks, websites, and platforms are written in PHP:

  • WordPress
  • Laravel
  • Magento
  • Wikipedia
  • Facebook
  • Slack
  • Etsy
  • Mailchimp
  • etc

PHP will continue to power entrepreneurial endeavors on the web for the foreseeable future.

Challenge – Scaling PHP Applications

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

Scaling software products is a challenge. Scaling PHP software is a unique challenge.

Going from Product-Market fit problems to growth-focused software problems

The primary objective of most startups that use PHP is to build a product that customers enjoy using.. and this is smart.

Your goal when you start shouldn’t be to build the most elegant software. You need to validate that you have a good solution for a customer product. You need to be able to iterate quickly and deliver functionality to meet changing requirements. You’re also on a budget and need to make sure your dev and infrastructure costs stay reasonable.

ok. then what.

You hit the “What’s wrong with my software?” moment.

There is a point in time when most companies hit a crossroads where their software doesn’t meet the demand.

  • New feature development time and costs begin to skyrocket
  • Performance issues and bugs grow quickly
  • Customer experience craters and complaints become unmanageable.

What do you do?

#1 – Breathe and realize this is a good problem to have. This means that you have the means to scale and invest in your technology to grow it right. You aren’t worried about the business problems of finding customers. You’re focused now on delivering value to your customers and finding future customers. Now is the time to be smart and make the right decisions.

#2 – Make smart 1-step at a time ROI-based decisions. Scaling software doesn’t have to be difficult. This is true for PHP-based products as well. Whether using Laravel, WordPress, or custom programming, you can quickly, and efficiently begin to scale your software to millions of requests without working 100 hours a week in a toxic environment.

What does good software look like to you?

Good software products should make it easy to grow customers.

Good software should keep cloud & infrastructure costs reasonable as you grow.

Good software should be organized in a way that dev time stays reasonable as new features are developed.

The FuelingPHP Pillars of Healthy PHP Applications

  1. Software Craftsmanship
  2. System Architecture
  3. Cloud Operations
  4. Service Integrations

The Team

Stephen Miracle – Founder & Director of Solutions

Stephen started FuelingPHP after many years of leading PHP-driven software products and solutions. He has felt the pain, failure, and success of scaling PHP to millions of requests. He understands the unique challenges, mounting frustrations, and burden of taking a software product that cannot stay online for customer demand and transforming it into a resource those same customers love and use every day.

Aamir Khan – Lead Tech Researcher

Aamir has been with FuelingPHP from day 1 when our page view count for the first few months was 10 and probably consisted of ourselves and our family. He has a degree in computer science and worked on the DevOps team at one of the fastest-growing food-delivery startups.

Aamir has the skills for programming while also being born with the talents of teaching & research. His mom is a teacher and taught him the value of digging deep into topics that he values. Aamir is passionate to help young technology professionals really understand the details of the software they are building.

Focus Areas

  • Software Craftsmanship
  • Cloud Operations
  • System Architecture

Abid Ullah – Tech Researcher

Hey there! This is Abid Ullah. I am a software engineer. I love writing about software as much as I love developing software. The merger of these two powerful skills empower me to teach others what I have learned throughout my journey of learning.

I joined FuelingPHP when it was already growing at an immense rate. I found a wonderful opportunity to go above and beyond and add a huge value for people in software and tech.

Focus Areas

  • Software Craftsmanship
  • Service Integrations