What is the usual rate for PHP developers?

In the table below, you will find a comparison of the average annual salaries and local rates of PHP developers from four different countries: the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia. All figures are taken from PayScale.

Companies and organisations which are looking to reduce overhead and recruitment costs are now utilising services provided by IT outsourcing companies all over the world.

Here at Cloud Employee, we understand that businesses need to find the right tech talents fast and risk-free to be able to grow and expand their operations. In Western countries such as the UK, the US, and Australia, finding and hiring skilled developers and tech talents at competitive costs have become a struggle, making it difficult for businesses to develop their products and reach their highest potential.

To address this problem, we connect these startups and SMEs to the best offshore PHP developers at competitive industry rates. We help them find the tech talent they need in the fastest amount of time possible.

For more information on software development outsourcing, here’s a full blog on offshore developer rates from different outsourcing regions.

What are the best practices in PHP development?

In this section, we’re listing down some best practices in PHP development. Throughout your interview process (during interviews or technical tests), it may be a good idea to check if your candidates are well aware of these.

Use the current version


This is the first and the most important among the others: always use a current version of PHP (as of writing, the current version is 7.3.x) Sometimes, due to shared hosting restrictions, little to no budget and time for upgrade testing, and the lack of keenness to change defaults, the PHP binaries tend to get left behind.

Aside from using the current version, it also helps to schedule regular updates of both PHP and the extensions or libraries used with it. Upgrades can provide new language features, improvements in speed and memory use, and security updates.

Set sensible defaults


PHP already does a great job of setting good defaults out of the box, thanks to its php.ini.development and php.ini.production files, but to further enhance this, here are some recommended settings:

• date.timezone - You can pick from thislist of supported timezones.
• session.save_path - Set this to something outside of /tmp, especially if you will use files for sessions and not some other save handler. /tmp is typically wide open in terms of permissions, so leaving this as /tmp can be risky especially on a shared hosting environment.
• session.cookie_secure - If you are serving your PHP code over HTTPS, turn this on.
• session.cookie_httponly - Recommended settings to prevent PHP session cookies from being accessible via JavaScript.

Bonus: Use a tool like iniscan to test your configuration for common vulnerabilities, scan a php.ini file for common security practices and receive results.

Use Composer


One of the best practices for writing PHP code is, surprisingly, to write less of it. While one of the best ways to improve in programming and get familiarised with the language is to code and code, it is a different story when the aim is efficiency and productivity.

The large community has solved a large number of problems when it comes to development with PHP, such as routing, basic input validation libraries, unit conversation, database abstraction layers, and more. As you browse throughPHP package repositories, you are likely to find solutions to problems you’re trying to solve that have already been tested as well.

There is nothing wrong with writing your own framework or library, or writing all the code by yourself especially as a learning experience. But using existing frameworks and libraries, especially those which are tried and tested, can make you more efficient.

Using Composer, particularly, can make the work easy for you. It lets you define a JSON file that lists your code’s dependencies. Then, it will try to resolve the requirements for you by downloading and installing the necessary code bundles.

Unit Testing


Unit testing, as its name may suggest, is the practice of writing small tests that verify the behaviour or small units or the code. Unit tests are extremely valuable tools that improve your code by helping you make sure your code is doing what you intend it to do, and by providing useful design feedback, too. If a piece of code is difficult to test, then it most probably has design problems.

You can ask these two questions to your potential PHP developers:
Q: Name at least one PHP automated testing framework.
A:PHPUnitis the best-known framework for writing Unit Tests for PHP apps which can be used via the command line. This provides a useful TestCase class which can be extended according to one’s needs. PHPUnit also allows developers to use pre-written assertion methods to PHPUnit can be installed by downloading a PHAR file directly, or by having it installed with composer. It can also be installed as a dev dependency with the following command:

Here are 9 other PHP automated testing frameworks that your interviewee might mention:

• Codeception– enables developers to write not only Unit Tests but also Functional and Acceptance Tests. Codeception is integrated with many PHP development frameworks such as Symfony, Laravel, Yii, Phalcon, and the Zend Framework.
• Behat– a behaviour-driven PHP testing framework (StoryBDD subtype) in which the tests look like stories rather than code.
• PHPspec– also follows a behaviour-driven testing approach like Behat, but the other subtype which is SpecBDD. ‍Inspired by a Ruby testing framework called RSpec, developers have to first write the specifications that describe how the application code will behave.
• Storyplayer– a full-stack testing framework perfect for testing an entire platform. Storyplayer makes it possible to write end-to-end tests, and it has support for creating and destroying test environments on demand.
• Peridot– a lightweight and extensible testing framework which allows testers to easily customise the framework through its event-driven architecture as well as plugins and reporters.

Q: What are the characteristics of a good unit test?
A:Here are some points you can expect your PHP developer to answer.
Good unit tests…

• Run in milliseconds.
• Still pass with no network access.
• Limit file system access (which speeds up and adds flexibility when deploying code to other environments).
• Do not have any dependency on the database server or any external resource
• Test only one thing at a time
• Are well-named
• Are mostly fake objects. The only “real” objects should be those that are tested; the rest should be some form of test double.

How can Cloud Employee help you?

At Cloud Employee, we provide startups, SMEs and large firms access to top-notch IT professionals in the Philippines. Through our simple recruitment process, we help you find and hire offshore PHP developers without the risks and hassle.

Simply send us your IT staffing requirements such as years of experience, skill sets needed, and other necessary information. Our team scouts for available PHP developers who fit your needs. Afterwards, we give a shortlist of candidate CVs from which you will select the candidates who move on to interviews and free technical trials. Our process ensures that no commitment will be made until you are fully satisfied with your offshore PHP developer.

Upon hiring, your offshore PHP developer becomes a part of your team working the same office hours as you. Your offshore PHP developer reports directly to you and uses your preferred tools and standards making them an effective member of your team.

Meanwhile, Cloud Employee provides your offshore PHP developer with on-site supervision, workspace set-up, and full IT support. We also handle everything else such as workspace facilities, licensing, permits, payroll, taxes, HR and general admin, leaving you free to focus on running your team and business.

With Cloud Employee, you can hire offshore PHP developers with a broad range of skill sets: databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle; PHPUnit testing framework; web frameworks such as CakePHP, FuelPHP, Laravel, Phalcon, CodeIgniter, Slim, Symfony, Yii, Zend; popular CMS such as WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal; e-commerce platforms such as Magento, Shopify, ZenCart.

What is the dedicated developer model?

Here at Cloud Employee, we employ the dedicated hiring model wherein we provide clients with dedicated tech talents, equipment and resources tailored specifically to their project’s requirements. The clients pay only for the services they need, and the single sum of money they pay already constitutes the outsourced developer’s monthly salary and the outsourcing provider’s fee.

The biggest advantage of our model is that it is able to integrate the outsourced developer or development team into the in-house team seamlessly and painlessly. Since our dedicated developers work 100% exclusively on one project at a time, they are able to focus on the project and they have a good grasp of the client’s objectives and expectations.

Pros

• Perfect setup for long-term projects, even with initially unsettled requirements and a frequently changing project scope
• Can accommodate projects without a definite project scope as long as there is a predictable budget
• As the client, you gain full control throughout the process: from recruitment, selection, up to management of the outsourced dedicated team
• The outsourced developer or development team works exclusively for you and uses only the tools and standards you use
• The outsourced developer or development team gains a good understanding of your business goals and expectations

When is it best to use the dedicated outsourcing business model? It is perfect for clients who…

• Prefer to have a dedicated team to work on the project
• Want to cut down on hiring and recruitment expenses
• Want flexibility in terms of workload and scalability, especially during the development

The dedicated PHP developer you hire with Cloud Employee works at your working hours, allowing you to work together at the same time. This significantly reduces communication issues and inconveniences you may meet with traditional outsourcing setups. Moreover, since your dedicated PHP developer uses only your preferred tools, software, and standards, they become an effective and efficient extension of your in-house team.

Along with 20 years of experience in the IT outsourcing industry, our business model has become a truly unique and effective hiring solution which addresses the tech talent needs of startups and SMEs from all over the world. We simplify the hiring process and make work practices and processes flexible, all at competitive industry rates—a cost-effective and smarter way to outsource compared to traditional outsourcing.