I’ve had some pretty horrific experiences in the past working with web programmers. It cost me a lot of time, money and not to mention, my reputation. Now days, I work with only the best people with solid proven experience. I had to learn the hard way, but you don’t have to make that mistake by knowing what I’m about to share with you. Here’s a few of things you should keep in mind when embarking on hiring a web developer.

When choosing the right web developer, the most important quality to look for is experience. This is true of almost any job, but it holds especially true for anything that involves producing websites and software programming. Getting to be a good web developer and particularly a competent programmer takes a lot of time and experience. If a web developer builds your website incorrectly, you stand to lose massive amounts of business, compromise the security of your e-commerce system, or even expose your web server to serious security threats. You stand to loose everything!

Looking for a developer based on credentials alone doesn’t guarantee what they know about working with real life situations, common issues with certain systems and latest industry knowledge. This is particularly important as technologies are ever-changing and developers always have to be ahead of the game and stay informed. Be sure to ask developers about what experience they have with different systems and software packages. Ask them for examples of sites they have built before, that are similar to what you require. Do your homework and you’ll be thankful that you’ve chosen the right developer for the job, someone that you can put your trust in and invest your capital into building your future.

“From my experience I can tell you that once you find a good developer, hold on to them for dear life!”

Seriously! Good developers are hard to come by in a very saturated market, with many charlatans posing as experts in their field.

Aside from experience, it is important to know that the people you are working with are good communicators, and whose personality gels with you. You may just be doing a small project at times, but in any case, good professional relationships yield the best results.

“You get what you pay for”

Also one thing that is true in this industry is that you get what you pay for. I really want you to understand this, and it wasn’t until I worked on my first web based project with a developer that I really got to know this. Programming, particularly for dynamic sites can be loads and LOADS of work! So naturally, that ain’t gonna be cheap. There are people out there who are waiting for an inexperienced person to come along and say “I haven’t got much money, but can you build me a website with everything for dirt cheap?” And they’ll say yes. And give you next to nothing, and take your money and run. Don’t fall into this trap. Web design and development, like any profession, when done well, takes experience, time and effort to create the best results. If you are investing in a website that is a sales and marketing communication tool for your business, you aught to be looking for excellent results. So with this in mind be prepared to spend money to achieve what you’re looking for.

Since establishing TheOnlineCreative.com I’ve worked very hard to find the right people who I have hand-picked to work with me to create the very best work that I can be proud of. And the clients who have come to us for project work are all regular clients now. They get the very best quality and they are looked after very well. We pride ourselves on the work we deliver and we work very closely with our clients to give them the very best outcomes that not only answer their requests but help them build their future. Please feel free to Contact us any time to ask for advice or how we can help you with your ideas or projects. We are always here to help you.

I hope these tips are useful in helping you to find what you’re looking for in a developer. Please post your comments and feedback and let me know if I can help you clarify any questions.

The PHP scripting language has an enjoyed an enormous growth in popularity over the past few years. It benefits from being particularly easy to pick up, and from having been designed as a language specifically for producing webpages. This means that choosing PHP as your implementation language allows you to build a dynamically-generated webpage quickly and easily. So if you are looking to build systems that include forums or communities, organizers, project management tools, calendars, shopping carts, mailing lists, and all sorts of useful applications we can have it done for you using the LAMP technology, The LAMP architecture has become popular in the web industry as a way of deploying web applications. PHP is commonly used as the P in this bundle alongside Linux, Apache and MySQL.

Why do we recommend PHP?

• PHP is a convenient language for rapidly prototyping simple dynamic websites like community portals. Websites thus built can in many cases be deployed indefinitely, without spending time and money on refactoring code in a different language.




• We intend to offer you cost effective solutions, The actual code that is PHP is available to the public for free, while the source code for products such as ASP is not. So PHP is very cheap. Because PHP is open source.




• We believe in giving you the benefit of the latest technology. This scripting language is growing day by day. Our PHP developers use PHP5, PHP5 a fully object oriented language and its platform independence and speed on Linux server helps to build large and complex web applications.




• PHP code is inserted directly into the HTML that makes up a website. When a visitor comes to the website, the code is executed. Because PHP is a server side technology, the user does not need any special browser or plug-ins to see the PHP in action. PHP uses are widespread, and can include any kind of server functionality that takes user’s input and displays or manipulates the input.




• We too value your users time, PHP doesn’t, not use a lot of the system,or resources so it runs fast and does , not tend to slow other processes down. It is typically used as an Apache module, written in C, so it loads and executes quickly. It works well with other software and can be quite fast.




• Accessibility is the key advantage of PHP, and so are its connective abilities. PHP uses a modular system of extensions to interface with a variety of libraries. In addition to extensions, PHP has tons of server interfaces, database interfaces and other modules available; it allows for advanced programming and is easy to integrate with web pages. PHP can run on both UNIX and Windows servers, which makes it more accessible than Windows (ASP).




• Modern websites are expected to be able to react quickly to changing demands and be easily available by the users. Now search spiders “see” all the content on a PHP page, the same way it is viewed in a browser.

“PHP and MySQL are excellent choice for you if you intend to automate your web site.”

• If you are concerned about Portability, then PHP / MySQL application is portable across operating systems and environments … PC, Mac, Linux, Unix, Windows, Lindows, Internet, Intranet, etc. This means you can develop an application for you on your Windows PC, and have it accessed by your user in another part of the globe who can run it on his Linux box.




• PHP / MySQL is most often used to create dynamic web sites. On this web site, one script drives about 60 pages of content. Additional scripts are used here to process form data … but that too could be done through the main script using included files.




• Data can be exported from MySQL (MySQL Database Programming) for use in spreadsheets or databases on your PC. Similarly, data residing in existing PC spreadsheets and databases can be imported to an online database. The portability of data opens up all sorts of uses, especially for workgroups and for those who need to access data from both home and work.