Category: PHP Development

Got an eCommerce Project? Confused how to work on the same? Then, this blog post will serve a perfect guide for you as it includes a complete process that shows how one can easily work on such projects.

So, let’s first understand what actually a project is? In simple terms, we can say a project is a task that is to be accomplished with definite set of skills. But thinking upon it deeply; we can say that “A project is a relationship between you and your client”.

It is very important to maintain this relation and that too in a smooth way. Relationships can be maintained if there’s proper communication; as communication is the key to make relationships successful.

To get better outcome of any project, it is necessary to invest sufficient amount of time in it. In the beginning all projects seem to be very exciting and interesting but as days go further, excitement reduces.

So, in order to maintain this excitement it is important to understand properly the expectations of the clients as this will pay excellent dividends for any project. This is applicable to both agencies as well as developers.

Factors to be borne in mind while working on any Project:

• Never Assume Anything: Sometimes we often have many illusions before we actually communicate with clients. In the initial stages of project; we cannot communicate much however within small frames of communication, one must try to understand everything clearly.

  Always communicate about what you think; just thinking and not discussing the things can lead to several missteps. So, never make false assumptions about anything. Communication is an important key to understand things easily.

• Clear all expectations: Be crystal clear when it comes to expectations as misunderstanding may lead developers into trouble. The initial phase of the project is to know what one needs to do and the second is to actually do it.

  The conversation must be simple enough to be understood by anyone. Show your firm commitments and create confidence. The main aim of any firm is to meet the expectations of the clients and this can be done only if these are clear in our mind.

• Do proper Research: For any agency or even a freelancing developer, it is advisable to give something different to the client and this can be done with the help of research as research makes it easy to understand things for everyone.

  This is a continuous process that takes place during the project. However, some things must be found in advance as this may help in successful accomplishment of any project. Developers get remuneration for their work and this work is something that they are solely responsible for. Hence, proper work must be done so that expectations are met completely.

Wind Up

In a nutshell, to make things work smoothly; keep in mind several things like as:

• Proper and relevant timely communication
• Clearing all the doubts.
• Understanding the needs properly
• Prefer to have expectations in writing from clients
• In case, there’s a change or something is not possible, inform client straight away about the same.
• Always maintain your honesty.

This will help you to accomplish eCommerce projects successfully and in an easy manner.

WordPress is a platform that is continuously upgrading to meet the demand of its users. Today, we will discuss about its security release that can be used for all of the previous versions and all those having their websites and blogs on WordPress are requested to get those updated with this latest release.

New WordPress Security Release:

WordPress 4.3.1 is now available which addresses the three main issues such as two cross site scripting vulnerabilities and potential privilege escalation.

The previous versions 4.3 and further are accessible to a cross site scripting vulnerability when they process short tags. Further, a separate cross site scripting vulnerability was seen in the user list and in some cases, users were able to publish private posts with proper permissions.

This new release can be used to fix up to twenty six bugs. This can be easily downloaded or can be updated by just clicking on “Update Now” which supports automatic background updates.

Well, if you are new to the WordPress field then here’s the step by step process that will guide you on upgrading this version:

Upgrading to the latest Version:

Have you just started using WordPress? Are you aware about the upgrading process? Not sure? There’s nothing to take burden about the same, we will guide you on how to upgrade your current version to the latest version.

New WordPress version is just released and now it’s time for you to adopt the change. However, for some adopting to change may be very tough process but we are making it easy. So, let’s begin:

Process of Updating WordPress:

There are two ways to advance your WordPress version, one is using Single click update and second is Manual update. Well, before actually understanding both the processes, the first thing is to Back up your current data because when you start the update process, it will affect all of your data and files and so it is advisable to take a back up before actually initiating the process. In case, there are some issues; back up helps you to restore the website very quickly.

Once the backup is done then is the time to use either of the processes that is Single Click or Manual.

What is One Click Update?

Recent WordPress versions provide an option of Automatic update. Hence, the update can be launched just by clicking the link in the banner or by selecting the options Dashboard> Updates Screen.

You will be redirected to the Update WordPress page, here click on the Update Now button and the process will begin and the moment it is finished, your version will have all the updated features.
Such updates work on most of the servers. In case you have any problems then these might be related to permission issues on the file system.

Manual Update:

Those who are using WordPress 2.7 or older; for them one click update won’t work and hence they will need to use manual update process only. Here are the instructions for Manual Process:

• Replace all the WordPress files: This can be done by using latest WordPress zip file and then this file can be unpacked. Then plugins are to be deactivated and all the old wp includes as well as wp admin directories must be deleted.

  Now, all the files are to be uploaded separately from the new wp content folder to the existing wp content folder. Don’t delete the current WP files folder.

  Upload all the new files from the base directory of the new version to the current WordPress root directory. Hence, all the old files are updated to the new ones.

  Here, an important thing is to “Delete the .maintenance file”. This can be done using FTP.

• Update the Installation: Login to the main WordPress admin page. In case, there’s a need for database update then WordPress will detect it and provide a URL link. This link as well as the instructions must be followed and as a result, the database will be updated with the latest code.

  Perform this step as soon as you finish off with the first step.

• Clear the Cache: Some WordPress versions have caching enabled, this must be cleared in order to make the changes go live immediately or the visitors will still be able to see the older version instead of the new one.

This completes the successful update of WordPress and now is the time to enable the Plug-ins. In case, you face some login issues then try to clear cookies from the browser.

Wind Up

Hope this blog post will make it easy for you to update your WordPress website or blog. Feel free to clear any doubts from expert WordPress developers at Softqube Technologies.

Stay tuned with us for some posts full of technical guidance.

The most prominent programming language used by most of the business enterprises is PHP. Due to its features and benefits; it is opted the most by web developers. Still, there are rumours that it will not last much in the industry yet this is not true.

Recently PHP 7 was released and there are no chances of getting it lapsed from the market. It is one of the languages that can be used with any of the well known languages like HTML5, JS etc. There are several PHP frameworks that make development work very easy.

It is very easy to learn but hard to master. When firms want to hire any PHP developer, they are in deep confusion and this blog post from Softqube Technologies, expert PHP developers in India will serve as a perfect guide to them.

What one must consider while hiring PHP Developers?

First of all, a very good advertisement is actually needed to draw the attention of professional web developers looking to pursue their career in PHP field. The advertisement must mention the type of skills you actually need as well as the frameworks you want developers to work on.

It is advisable to use a PHP job description template as this will include all the things that one must consider while hiring professionals.

Further, the thing is to decide whether you want an average PHP developer or an elite one? For later candidate, there’s a need for well planned hiring process. The first step is to weed out the unfit candidates from the huge bunch of applications.

Another factor is codility which works perfectly. Third important thing is to decide the number of technical interviews you wish to conduct to measure the proficiency of any developer. Then the need arises to create a tie breaking system to identify who will be ultimately selected from one or more candidates.

Next part is to ask Questions as this will check the ability of candidate to solve any given problem. The best way is to choose the problem from your current client’s project and check whether the candidate can solve it or not and how long it takes to solve the issue and bring the required solution.

The main thing is to hunt for such candidates who work on PHP passionately. One such way is to arrange conferences and meet ups from which you can select the right candidate. Such meet ups have top developers who can be useful to you.

Another option is to search online communities like as freelance sites, question and answer sites like Stack exchange and other such technical blogs.

Things to be taken care of during the Job:

The hiring process doesn’t end when you have selected the right candidate. It continues till the time you are satisfied with the work of the new candidate. It is necessary to supervise the work of new PHP developers during the initial days till the time you get full confidence over the candidate.

It is necessary to take care that candidates adhere to PHP best practices. Also, the candidates must use their complete potential while working with any of the PHP frameworks. Get suggestions from hires regarding new technology and examine their knowledge about the latest tools.

Wind Up

Hope this process will help business owners to hire perfect candidates for the project. For more such tips and tricks, stay connected with us.

Web Developers often face with time constraint. It sometimes is the productivity killer. Time zones are the ones that sometimes cause pain to the developers. Every developer faces this and then every QA team which tests the application is in the same time zone.

Yes, it is often that people from other time zone may use your app and this is the time that one must wait for.

What is the default Time Zone?

Every developer has a baseline to work from and that is called the server time zone. Many people prefer to use UTC however something standard must be transformed and may get value to work from.

Whenever any new date is created without any time zone preference, it is then transformed into server’s time zone. From there, one can easily transform it to the users need. When you store the dates in the database which is based on server’s time zone then it becomes easy to relate the events with one another as this makes everything normal.

How to work with dates as objects?

With PHP, one can work with dates as objects or like an old procedural code. First of all, we will cover dates with objects. With the simple object oriented design it is very easy to transform date into objects.

Let’s consider this code:

echo 'America/Los_Angeles:
';
$date = new DateTime('2015-01-01', new DateTimeZone('America/Los_Angeles'));
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:sP') . "

";

Here, we can see that a date time object in the Pacific time zone i.e.America Los Angeles is created. Now, below mentioned is another code which is written to transform this Pacific Time zone into Eastern Time zone.

echo 'America/New_York:
';
$date->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('America/New_York'));
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:sP') . "

";

In this code, we can see that the time zone which was created first is taken as object and now it will simply change to the time zone known as “American New York”. This sounds pretty easy, isn’t it?

So, what one must keep in mind is that while carrying out date conversion; one must know the source. It is very important to know the “Source”. Every date time function may not help you if in case you are unaware about the time zone of your data source.

While working with any applications when you are accepting any dates from the client side they will be mostly in the form of client’s time zone. Hence, it is very necessary to identify the time zone as it will normalize your data.

There are some applications that take care of this thing by knowing the users settings which show what the time zone is and very few depend solely on back end for the dates.

Wind Up

The main thing is after normalizing your inputs it is very easy to transform the time zone. One more time “Knowing your Inputs” is very important. So, next time when you wish to convert your time zone, keep your inputs handy.

For more such guidance, stay tuned with Softqube Technologies; PHP Web Development Company in India.

Once you have developed any web application using PHP then before actually making it alive, it is actually tested and scanned to check for any remaining errors. Today, in this blog post from PHP Web Development Company, Softqube Technologies; we will see how such tests can be performed by using some PHP Testing and Debugging tools.

Yes, these tools will help to boost productivity because writing a proper code is more important than just writing a code with errors. The focus must be on boosting the productivity. Productivity is the main concern.

Hence, let’s check out what these tools are and how these can be used to enhance productivity by identifying the errors quickly as well as solving them to get the perfect programming language for your application or website.

Five Best Productivity Enhancement Tools in PHP:

• Cucumber: Yes, cucumber is good for health but here we are not discussing about the vegetables. Cucumber is actually a PHP based behaviour based tool which is used to write tests in very simple English.

  Yes, one can also write it in other 30 spoken languages which are available inside the tool itself. Then these tests are performed with other third party tools like as Mechanize or Selenium.

  This tool is basically used for Ruby on Rails but this can now be used with other main stream programming languages as well like as Java, PHP, Python and more.

• PHP Unit: Yet another useful tool that is used along with the application code. Developers constantly are motivated to think about various ways in which errors must be avoided or if occurred can be solved easily.

  These errors can be solved with the help of such tools like PHP Unit where PHP Developers can provide an amazing solution to carry out test driven development which will provide perfect solution for writing, organizing and automating the tests. Adopting such tools can boost productivity up to a certain extent.

• Simple Test: Apart from cucumber and PHP Unit, Simple Test is one of the most useful PHP testing and debugging tools that make it easy for developers to write unit tests with the most familiar PHP Syntax.

  Along with testing, it offers some amazing features such as web interface testing that has the ability to test authentication and web forms. This tool is very simple to use even for a novice.

• XDebug: No PHP based application can be made live without proper testing and debugging. Sometimes this involves the inspection of application at different stages of execution. Reviewing the object content can sometimes be a messy job as it may lack proper formatting when these contents are added to the browser. This extension can boost the data readability.

  This is one of the most useful tools without which sometimes error debugging may seem to be a very tough task.

• FireBug: Developing great websites doesn’t mean just to understand a server side language. Even the simple websites are to be driven by the combination of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP.

  The entire ability to test and debug all the webpages weighs heavily on productivity. To reduce this weight from productivity, PHP tools like FireBug are useful.

Wind Up

Well, this is just an overview of how PHP Tools can boost productivity. One can make web development task easier by using any of these tools and in case any kind of guidance is required to use these tools then you can get in touch with any of the PHP Experts.

Do you have your website on WordPress? Do you wish to customize your WordPress Dashboard? This blog post from Softqube Technologies, one of the well known WordPress development Companies in India shows how WordPress Dashboard can be customized:

Here, few simple things are shown that one can do to customize the WordPress back end without altering the web code.

Cleaning the Dashboard Area:

The huger your website is; the busier your admin area is. Hence, one can easily clean up the dashboard area and make it neat.

One can do this by properly organizing the admin panels.

Hiding Information Panels:

Click “Screen” Option that is available on the top right corner of the WordPress admin screen.

This will show you the options for various panels of the Dashboard that one wishes to hide or display.

Hiding or displaying the options can help to properly organize the admin dashboard and showcase only the required information.

Minimizing WP Dashboard Panels:

Hiding elements one can minimize content blocks in the dashboard area by clicking on the inverted triangle in the corner of panel’s title bar. This will help you to keep the area clean and tidy. The information can be expanded or collapsed with as much information as one needed.

Rearranging WordPress Elements:

The layout of the admin dashboard can be reorganized by dragging and dropping these elements. Some content panels allow to modify other display options which may not seem proper during first look.

Hovering over the mouse panel with the mouse will make a link appear which then allows to further modify the remaining information. Along with re-modification of the information inside the dashboard, one can also change the colour scheme of the admin area directly from the WordPress settings or by using plugins.

The colour scheme can be easily changed just by clicking on “Howdy User” that is seen at the top right hand corner of the admin screen. Once the colours are changed then remember to click the “Update” button that is available at the bottom of the page.

This will update your settings and then you will see your dashboard colour scheme getting changed immediately.
Hence, in this way one can alter the settings and customize the WordPress dashboard as per the need. So, next time you feel the need to modify your WordPress Dashboard, you can follow the steps mentioned here.

Wind up:

One can also get help from well known WordPress developers to get the customization done. However, it is advisable to get the things done by an expert in case you fail to do it on your own. So, either hire an expert or carry out the task on your own but your WordPress customization should actually meet your business needs. It must have the look and feel that you actually are looking for.

For more such updates, guidance and information stay connected with us. We will be happy to listen from you the experiences about using our guidelines regarding any kind of web development tasks.

So, Readers and viewers; we are back with the second part of the new blogging platform called Ghost. In our previous blog; we saw the features and drawbacks of this platform. Here, in this part we will discuss about installing Ghost as well as creating custom templates using Ghost.

Hence, first of all let’s begin with Installing the Ghost.

Installing Ghost:

This amazing platform needs node.js. SQLite is the one that is used as a development database. So, one can install npm and then the Ghost development environment can be run easily. As compared to WordPress where it is necessary to develop MYSQL database and HTTP Server; Ghost offers a completely new experience.

Apart from this, there are several other ways to run and install Ghost. Yes, one can definitely get a trial before actually using it. Hence, it is advisable to first have it on your personal computer. This can be Windows, Mac or Linux. One can also install it on VPS.

In short the normal process of setting up Ghost is as follows:

• Install Node.js and npm. Npm already has node.js installed.
• Then Download the latest version of Ghost
• Derive the entire contents of Ghost Package wherever you wish your website to be.
• Arrange your Ghost options and settings as per the need.

Themes in Ghost:

Ghost uses a view engine for Handle bars known as hbs. We can say that Ghost themes contain a batch of hbs templates as well as partials that are used to administer the way HTML is to be generated for every page.

In any default Ghost theme, you can get various files such as page.hbs, default.hbs, post.hbs and many others.

If you want to customize any Ghost theme, then it is mandatory to have the knowledge of CSS and HTML.

How to create Custom Templates:

The main thing in Ghost is the template customization of various individual pages and posts. Template customization is done with the use of Handlebars. Using this system, one can easily give any page completely new look and feel.

Here, there’s an option to customize the templates for individual pages instead of customising all of them.

For this, front-end.js is responsible which decides what partials will be loaded based on the URL that is accessed by the user. Here, one can get the routes for RSS Feed, tags, authors etc. Hence, a simple thing is to add rules to match the specific pages.

Making your Ghost Site Live:

Once the entire theme customization is done then it is time to make your Ghost site go live. You can choose from the innumerable ghost hosting platforms ( here the link will be of previous part, blog of 7th Sept 2015). The configuration is stored in ./config.js. The configuration variable stores objects for development as well as production.

Finally when everything is ready, just push the site to the remote using the command “: git push”.

And you website on Ghost platform is up and running.

Wind Up

This completes the entire information about Ghost- a new blogging platform. For more such updates and latest news from the industry, stay connected with Softqube Technologies, PHP Development company in India.

We keep discussing about PHP, its uses and draw backs, its popularity and all. Today, this blog post from Softqube Technologies, PHP development Company India will serve as a guide for those who face difficulty in working with conditional statements in PHP.

Today, we will discuss about how conditional statements can be used? Well, first of all let us know what a conditional statement is?

Meaning of Conditional Statement:

A group of programming features which are available in every programming language are known as conditional statements. One of the well known example of such statement is the “if” statement. We have various conditional statements in PHP however it entirely depends on the decision of the programmer to know which approach suits best the situation.

Use of Conditional Statement:

Such statements help the programme to decide what route one must take keeping in mind the evaluation of the condition. These have only two values either “true” or “false”.

How to develop these statements?

Two basic concepts can be used to create conditions. One concept is that the condition can either return any of the two values: True or False. Second concept is till the time a thing has a value, it can be used as condition.

Comparison Operators:

These are used to compare two values with one another. Conditional statements entirely depend on such operators as these serve as a base for developing the conditions. There are enormous types of operators available in PHP and these are as follows:

• Equal operator
• Identical operator
• Not identical operator
• Less than
• Greater than
• Less than or equal to
• Greater than or equal to

Conditional Statements in PHP:

PHP has several types of conditional statements like as if, else, elseif and switch. Here we will learn about each one of them:

1. If Statement: This is the basic statement of many of the programming and scripting languages and PHP is one of them. With this statement, developers can create simple control structures.

   Codes can be processed only if there’s one expression that is to be executed. If statements can be enclosed within other if statements and these enclosed statements offer complete flexibility for achieving conditional execution of several code paths of the scripts.

2. Else statement: The else statement enhances if statement as the else statement cannot influence the comparison statement. This can only be used in combination with if statement.

   In this if/else structure, ternary operator is used. This is useful while writing an if/else statement that allocates a value to the variable.

   Ternary operator structure: $foo = ([conditional expression])?[value if true] : [value if false];

3. Else if Statement: This also expands the else statement so it can offer comparison expression. If the elseif condition is true then it will perform the tasks mentioned inside the curly brackets. IF statement can contain unlimited else if statements.
4. Switch Statement: This is used to check variable across many different values. Switch statements can be rewritten as various if statements. This examines the value of $username and then offers $rank based on its value.

   These statements can have multiple cases allocated to the same code block.

Wind Up

Hence, here we have covered all the basic conditional statements that are used in PHP. In a nutshell, we learnt about basic PHP operators as well as four main conditional statements.

If you need some more guidance about the same then get in touch with our expert PHP developers.

The most popular web development language is PHP and developers love to work using this programming language. Near about 20 million domains use PHP, it is the programming language that is used by well known websites like Facebook, Wikipedia etc.

Every web developer wants to master the art of using PHP in an excellent manner. This blog post from Softqube Technologies, PHP Development Company is for such enthusiastic developers who wish to excel at programming and sharpen their skills in the development field. Hence, let’s move ahead and check out some tips that will make a normal PHP developer an Expert.

Get transformed into an expert PHP developer:

• Make use of PHP core functions and classes: If you wish to develop something that is very easily seen on the web then you can first try your hands at that most commonly used PHP function.

  Always take a look at the updated PHP manual before you actually start using the language to write the code for any web application or any eCommerce software. Avoid using long functions when one function does the work of many.

  Stay updated with latest set of PHP functions and classes.

• Form a Configuration File: Apart from just having your database connection settings spread everywhere, it is advisable to develop one master file which includes all the settings as well as your PHP scripts.

  You can change the details later on and combine all files into one single file known as Master file. This is a very useful way when there’s a need to use constants and functions in multiple scripts.

  Using a config file is a very useful and well adopted web application pattern which makes the code modular as well as easier to maintain.

• Always clean the data before actually adding it to the database: One of the easiest ways to clean the data is to make use of SQL injections. It is advisable to clean the database inputs so as to get rid of any issues later on.

  Hence, it is recommended to get a perfect idea of what SQL injections are. A PHP function is available that can reduce any number of huge heaps of problems. This is as follows: “mysql_real_escape_string”

  This function will get the regular string and then clean the entire data from it. When used with html special characters, it transforms the reserved HTML characters as well as protects the database by serving as a safeguard against XSS attacks.

• Always keep Error Reporting On till the development process is complete: Error Reporting must always be left on when the development is going on. This will help you to see run time errors which can quickly identify the origin of errors so that developers can easily fix it.

  This means the more quickly you are aware of the errors, the more speedy actions you can take to rectify them. Once the development process is over, you can set this error reporting off.

• Favourite code snippets must be easily available: In your entire PHP development career, you will have to code for enormous things and at that time favourite code snippets will be useful to you.

  This saves the time thus making it easier to accomplish application development task very soon. Various applications are available that can store and update your collection of code snippets which can be made available anywhere when needed.

Wind Up

These are some of the tips that PHP developers must follow to become an expert in the field. Give it a try and let us know your opinion and do share if you see any positive improvements.

There are innumerable themes available for your WordPress site. So, now you can experiment with your WordPress themes anytime and every time you want. Just select the theme that suits you and then you can start to make most of your web development platform.

WordPress offers an easy way to customize a theme based on your needs as well as expectations. Only there’s a need to examine the CSS of your theme. Here, in today’s post we will learn how to write CSS for your WordPress and solve the mistakes if any are occurred:

Let’s move ahead and know the perfect procedure of WordPress Theme Customization:

1. Neglecting the basic rules for selectors: Web developers sometimes forget the basic rules for selectors while writing CSS for the WordPress theme. So, if you are one of the developers who is thinking to change the CSS of the theme for a more advanced look and feel then it is necessary for you to become familiar with selectors as well as their usage.

   Every selector needs an identifiable class which excludes the HTML tags. Special attention must be given to proper arrangement of colons, semi colons along with open brackets.

2. Avoiding browser bugs: Your web page will have a different view in every browser. Hence, all browsers will provide a separate web page look. So, it is necessary to write CSS accordingly in such a way that the website looks good in all browsers.

   For this, all the CSS standards are to be followed. There are many CSS issues that arise due to website’s incompatibility for certain browsers.

   Certain common issues are as follows:

   • Text and links get out of the web page when the mouse is hovered over a particular link.
   • Text bounces over the entire page when the user scrolls the web page.
   • Inconsistency in the layout when the web page is viewed in different browsers.

   Writing CSS in proper manner can offer a good solution to these issues.

3. Writing important terms with wrong spelling: Grammar is equally important however here spellings are more important. Developers usually tend to misspell the important terms. These are then overlooked but in order to avoid such mistakes that can lead to many errors.

   One can make use of CSS validators which are used to rectify all the incorrectly spelled search terms that are present into CSS style sheet may be due to negligence or unawareness.

4. Using a wrong template module: Selecting a template module is also one of the significant tasks that must be taken care of while customizing the WordPress theme. Sometimes, developers make the mistake of selecting an incorrect template module section.

   To solve this mistake an easiest way is to take the complete back up of the overall CSS stylesheet which can then be restored as and when needed.

5. Improper styling of Block Quote element: Another important element is Block quote where developers often make mistakes. An easiest way style this block quote element is to add particular margins along with non regular font for improving the visual appeal of the WordPress theme.

Wind up:

From now on, web developers will surely keep in mind these mistakes when writing CSS for the WordPress template and as a result, they will be definitely able to offer an amazing website theme for their WordPress site or anyone’s WP site.

Stay connected with Softqube Technologies, Web Design Company India for more such updates about website design and development.