Why Developers May Want to Start Using Image CDNs
As an experienced developer team at HireIndianProgrammers, we have been taking up diverse web development assignments from clients for over a decade. Some of these clients even come back with more projects, a testimony to our service delivery and quality. For any website with the mandate of improving customer engagement and footfalls and thereby sales, performance and speed of the website are important driving forces. There are components of the website that affects performance like JavaScript and media – images, audio, video etc. Images, by far, are the critical affecting component of page load times. Of late, we have been receiving projects from niche start-ups particularly in the e-commerce sector and small business segment. This only furthers the cause for uploading more high quality images on the website.
Therefore, there arises a need to balance performance with content accessibility/quality.With the emergence of smartphones of varying sizes, there is also the need for content optimisation. Any website taking more than 3 seconds to load can frustrate users. So how can images be optimised? Well, there is the manual way – resizing all the images of the website. But more often than not, it is impractical to adopt such a mechanism, given the huge volume of images at the client’s disposal. They surely cannot compromise on the number or quality of images, given their business depends on it. This is the basis for Image CDNs (Content Delivery Networks). In this blogpost, we make a case for Image CDN – the what and when and how to use it.
So when can a developer use Image CDN?
- Client’s website suffers from sluggish performance (high load times)
- Client’s website is largely composed of images
- There is a need to regularly add images
- Client caters to multiple geographical markets
- Customers using low grade mobile networks
What is behind the working of Image CDN? Image CDNs contribute to website performance by working on the following – a) Detecting the customer device, b) automated image compression/ optimisation based on the device configuration, c) global integrated delivery network. When a user visits the client’s website, a request is sent to the nearby server where the device’s configuration and capabilities – OS version (Android or iOS), Pixel resolution, image format support – is assessed after which the requested image is searched from the server’s cache. Either the image is readily delivered or optimised for the device, based on availability.
Image Compression and optimisation are done using a specialised algorithm. However, clients may fret over loss of image quality. Fortunately, with Image CDN, only extraneous details are removed and the image qualifies well enough for the naked eye. Based on the software present on the device and browser used by the user, the Image CDN will select the most efficient image file format – jpeg, WebP, PNG and so on. If the customer is from another country, then Image CDNs get the cached image from the nearest server to the user and deliver the same, thereby ensuring speed at any place.
Clients catering to diverse customers in different locations may want to hire a PHP developer who understands the power of Image CDNs. For further queries with regard to hiring our developers, get in touch by writing to us. We will get back to you as soon as possible.
Enhancing UX with Weatherstacks API
Weatherstacks is a popular Application Program Interface that is used by many clients and businesses, especially those selling weather relevant products or hosting weather oriented events like marathons, bicycle riding events. In recent times, the market is flooded with events and experiences and people have very much taken to the idea of hosting or accessing such events online. This includes but is not limited to booking tickets and making reservations. In such business cases, weather plays an important role and it makes absolute sense to inform the customers of the current weather conditions wherever such events are happening. Not only events, even weather related products like smart bands and sunscreens can make use of Weatherstacks. As proclaimed by the software itself, Weatherstacks is a real-time and historical world weather data API that is endorsed by more than 75000 companies including the likes of Microsoft, Deloitte etc.
Elevated UX
Clients in the event management business looking to hire a dedicated php developer can deliberate on deploying Weatherstacks API on their websites. The basic idea is that clients tailor their offerings based on the seasons. In fact, that makes for a subtle and smart user experience – knowing the customer needs as per the current season – thereby increasing the end sales indirectly. In this respect, automation is the way to go as envisioned by Weatherstacks, especially if the client is catering to multiple geographies. With the API providing forecast data up to 14 days, clients can confidently and smartly do business under any weather.
Here’s a scenario to better understand about the usefulness of tweaking products according to season. Imagine a client handling a food delivery app with operations in multiple cities. Many cities mean different weather conditions – temperature, humidity and precipitation. With the help of Weatherstacks API forecast data, clients can display different food cravings as per the weather in that particular city. Even within a city, where weather conditions are likely to change in short intervals, businesses can display either ice-creams or hot spicy noodles or pastries. In the process, the client is successfully pulling in more customers for the long term.
Why Weatherstack?
The API sources data from some of the world’s largest weather stations which shows that its credibility is unquestionable. In addition to that, having access up to 14 days of weather data is a boon for companies looking to hire a php developer to build upon it subsequently, in their efforts to attract more customers, retain existing ones and expand the scope of the business. In fact, we are confident that clients can get more ideas as soon as they start noticing the changes in customer buying patterns and trends. What’s more? Weatherstacks also gives clients the option to start free and later on upgrade, no questions asked. Having weather data of thousands of locations with the capability of providing real time feed round the clock, powered by state of the art cloud infrastructure, Weatherstacks is an easy recommend for those clients looking to monetise their business innovatively.
Having gone through this blogpost, what do you think about Weatherstacks? Impressed? Not impressed? Leave us your thoughts in the comments section.
For further queries in hiring our developers, you can contact our developer team here.
Getting Geolocation for free using the IP Gelocation API
Businesses and internet businesses in particular cater to different people spread across geographies. Key to their efforts in growing their business is understanding where their customers come from along with their language, culture, purchase behaviour and so on.In short, getting hold of Geolocation data will help companies to better target and serve their offshore customers.
For instance, a Japanese customer could be served by translating the language of the website to Japanese. But more often than not, clients hiring PHP developers end up spending a lot on this task because geolocation is costly to implement, thereby leaving small companies outside its scope.
Our dedicated PHP developers at HireIndianProgrammers have provided a gamut of PHP development services to our clients for many years now. Given our experience, in this blogpost, our PHP developers discuss how to get Geolocation data for free with the help of IP Gelocation API and PHP Code.
We recommend using PHP code rather than Javascript since it gives room for developers to do more customisation. Firstly, create a new file named “location.php” and save it and open the PHP file. What follows is the establishment of a simple PHP function whose purpose is to grab the location of the IP address of the visiting customer. Even if a client is hiring a PHP developer with limited experience or if he is a freelancer, this procedure is easy enough to implement. Our developer team suggests that PHP programmers keenly follow the instructions.
After opening a PHP function with a parameter variable for IP address, create a new variable that stores PHP’s built in cURL to get data from the API. This will invariably start a session. The next task is to set the options for the same cURL session in order to load the corresponding URL (1st) for that IP address (2nd). As any PHP Developer would know, output in the first instance must be converted to intelligible string and we ask you to do the same. This string must then be stored into a new variable.
Now it is time for PHP developers to return the data retrieved from the function. It is upto the discretion of the corresponding client hiring the PHP Developer on how and when to call the function and output the geolocation using PHP’s echo. One thing our PHP programmers would exhort is to convert the JSON string into an object that can be accessed. This must be done to output the relevant parts of the data. There are some clients who hire PHP Programmers who would want real time information about who is accessing their website. This can again be accomplished by writing a simple PHP code employing the $_Server[“REMOTE_ADDR”] functionality inside the function that calls the IP address.
We hope that you found this blogpost to be informative. Get started in your PHP development process by first checking out our team at HireIndianProgrammers, their credentials, area of expertise and previous work.
If you are impressed with our work, you can then proceed to hire a PHP Developer from HireIndianProgrammers. For further queries, contact us here.
Top 5 Best PHP Frameworks to Learn and Use in 2022
In the software development space, PHP has been the go-to framework for coders in developing web applications. Being an open-source server-side scripting language and almost 80% of websites using PHP, it is extremely popular and useful for business web application developers to get the hang of it.
An ideal PHP framework must have certain elements like efficiency, password protection, ease of learning, and so on and it helps the PHP developers to create high-end web applications.
Hire Indian Programmers has a team of PHP stalwarts working round the clock to work on your website. In this blog post, we will take a look at the top 5 PHP frameworks for web development and their applications.
Top PHP Frameworks for Web Developers:
PHP developers have so many roles and responsibilities once they start to develop any web applications. These frameworks play major roles in this application process and it helps to streamline the web apps development by speeding up the process.
1. Laravel
In the world of PHP, Laravel is the most popular and used framework. Simply for the reason that it has the ability to develop complex web applications at greater effectiveness and efficiency than its rivals. After all, doing more with greater speed is what developers wish for. Laravel has unique packages such as Laravel Horizon, Laravel Nova, Laravel Echo, etc;
Using Laravel has its advantages, some of them being – readability, simplicity, value, and elegance designed for both the well-seasoned and new developers. It can also be used for individual developers or for large teams. Our PHP developers are specialists in Laravel among other frameworks. You can browse through our team and hire a PHP developer for your business site right away.
2. Phalcon
The Phalcon is a new entrant in the PHP Framework scene – started in 2012. It is a full-stack framework and owing to its full optimization of C and C++, it offers very high performance and makes it one of the fastest and easiest frameworks in the scene.
The installation process is quite simple, making it almost readily available. Due to its outstanding memory allocation and execution speed, it is very suitable for developing blazing fast, high-end applications, especially in line with business enterprise guidelines.
3. Symfony
Symfony is well known among PHP developers to create large-scale web applications. It includes very large libraries that are reusable and are known to allow authentication, configuration, security, creation, and a host of other features.
Some critical advantages of Symfony are its less repetition of codes, standalone components, speeding up of maintenance, and creation of web applications. You can hire a dedicated PHP developer from us if you are looking to expand your business and design an appropriate website for large-scale operations.
4. CodeIgniter
One of the easiest frameworks to use is the CodeIgniter. Additionally, it also has a strong security system to protect against attacks such as XSS and CSRF.
It is designed for developers that needed an elegant yet simple toolkit in mind when developing full-featured web applications. With CodeIgniter, typical version conflicts are avoided. It also handles errors very easily along with various choices in models and views.
5. CakePHP
This CakePHP framework supports both PHP4 and PHP5 as well. It has very concise coding and therefore it is very much preferred among PHP developers.
Additional features include code generation and allowing developers to build prototypes quickly with ease. CakePHP has a set of conventions to guide you while developing an application by boosting your online business. It is elegant and simple with a rich CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) framework that allows you to create visually stunning websites loaded with tons of features. There is no element of complication with everything you need built-in: accessing databases, authentication, validation, etc;
Before hiring the developers you should know the WHY hiring PHP developers and their importance. You can get started in your PHP development process by first checking out our team at Hire Indian Programmers, the leading PHP development company.
You can then proceed to hire a PHP Developer from us and explore our previous PHP projects. For more queries, contact us now.
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