When it comes to application development, there are different approaches you can take up to achieve your goal. However, in recent years, a few approaches like DevOps became mainstream.
The value of the global DevOps market was USD 4,311.95 million in 2020. It is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18.95%. The forecasted market value of DevOps by 2026 is USD 12,215.54 million.
The growth of DevOps is the result of organisations across the globe realizing its advantages. According to studies, DevOps is helping organisations with improving the quality of their software deployments, releasing more software in less time, improving cooperation and collaboration across teams and also improving the quality of code production.
However, DevOps is not a fault-free approach. Even though it integrates software development and IT operations efficiently, it never gave enough importance to application security. As a result, the industry is developing and adopting better versions of DevOps to have a comprehensive approach in terms of the software development life cycle. One such approach is DevSecOps.
DevOps and DevSecOps: What are they?
DevOps
Amazon define DevOps as
“DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.”
According to Microsoft Azure, DevOps is
“A compound of development (Dev) and operations (Ops), DevOps is the union of people, process, and technology to continually provide value to customers.”
In simple terms, DevOps is the integration of software development and IT operations by following a set of practices.
Under DevOps, Development and operation teams work in tandem. Both the teams will be part of the entire software lifecycle that includes development, testing, deployment and operations. Through automation, the teams eliminate a lot of manual and repetitive tasks and improve the overall efficiency. The use of technology stacks and tools, together with the knowledge of the complete software lifecycle helps team members complete tasks independently without affecting code compatibility.
DevSecOps
Seamless integration of security testing and protection with DevOps practices is called DevSecOps. Here quality assurance and security teams are also part of the entire product lifecycle. In DevSecOps, the “Sec” part denotes the importance it gives to application “security”.
Traditionally, the security of an application was tested only once the product is completed. It was tested by independent teams that have limited knowledge of development, deployment and operations. A separate security testing increased the overall duration of product development, and it also affected the philosophy of continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Not only that, there was no universal understanding of application security across the teams.
DevSecOps not only solved these weaknesses but also enabled security testing to run seamlessly and automatically. The real-time security testing brought down the production time significantly and organizations started to release more software in a short span of time.
What are the similarities between DevOps and DevSecOps?
Collaborative culture
A collaborative culture is the backbone of both DevOps and DevSecOps. It helps with rapid iteration, continuous testing and faster product delivery apart from reducing the overall duration of the software development lifecycle. A better understanding of the complete application lifecycle is encouraged across teams and as a result, the efficiency and code quality are also improved.
Active monitoring
Both DevOps and DevSecOps encourage active monitoring of data to encourage learning and easy adaptation. Continuous analysis of application data helps teams to improvise the products and adapt the best practices to create better software in the future. Real-time monitoring of data helps the team fix vulnerabilities faster, improvise existing security practices and optimize application performance.
Automation
Automation is vital in DevOps and DevSecOps practices. Automation helps teams eliminate manual and repetitive tasks and improve efficiency. With the use of stacks and tools, DevOps practitioners can reduce the time needed for each iteration and ensure the quality of the production. DevSecOps teams can use automation to run continuous and real-time security checks and avoid the most common vulnerabilities. Usage of Artificial Intelligence techniques like anomaly detection can also help both and such practices are advised when engaging in a complex release environment like distributed or multi-cloud infrastructure.
Encourage learning
Since both DevOps and DevSecOps practices require a collaborative environment, teams are encouraged to learn about the complete lifecycle of an application. Each member is advised to understand the basic practices concerning each stage of the development lifecycle to limit the probability of code conflicts. For example, developers are encouraged to understand common and potential security vulnerabilities, strengths and weaknesses of the deployment environment and how not to burden the operation teams. They are also encouraged to achieve tasks individually with the help of software stacks, automation and tools.
Rapid iteration and faster release
Both the practices encourage collaboration between teams. Traditionally, teams were working in “silos’ and they had to wait for “their turn” to start working on their tasks. However, DevOps and DevSecOps promote the philosophy of shared responsibility. Every team will be working in tandem. As a result, more tasks can be completed in a short time. This helped organisations run more iterations, improve the quality of the applications and also release more products in a short time.
Differences between DevOps and DevSecOps
The main difference between DevOps and DevSecOps is that the former has limited security practices.
A common DevOps software development life cycle is as follows,
Developers write codes and use version control to track changes.
New codes are integrated at the build phase.
Feedback is gathered from all code branches before compilation.
Software is pushed for deployment.
If the application meets all the standards, it is released to production.
If any vulnerabilities are found, the code is sent to developers for fixing and the above process is reiterated.
The delivery of the application is a shared responsibility of every member.
The common practices we can derive from the above process are,
Continuous Integration (CI): Code changes are merged and only the recent version is available to developers.
Continuous Delivery and Continuous Deployment (CD): Efficiency is increased by automating product releases.
Microservices: Creating a set of smaller applications that work together as single software.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Codes are used for designing, implementing and managing application infrastructure.
However, DevSecOps include a few more practices compared to DevOps. They are,
Threat modelling: Security tests are implemented during the development phase to save time and cost.
Common Weaknesses Enumeration (CWE): Increase the level of quality and security during CI and CD phases.
Automated security testing: Automation is used for continuous and real-time testing for finding vulnerabilities.
Incident response management: A standard framework is created for responding to vulnerabilities.
From the above description, it is evident that the organisations have a good reason, security, to prefer DevSecOps over DevOps. After all, application security is paramount in today’s world. Any compromise on security can spoil the success of the application and stain the image of its creators.
How to integrate security practices into DevOps?
The transition from DevOps to DevSecOps may seem complex. However, it is not enough a reason to justify not adopting the best security practices. Fortunately transiting to DevSecOps is not that complicated. You can start by adopting the following practices.
Shift left
Test early and often. The shift left philosophy encourages adopting security measures in the early stages of the software development lifecycle. Traditionally “security” came at the end of the development lifecycle. As a result, a lot of vulnerabilities that otherwise could be avoided plagued the application products. It is important that every team member who is a part of the development and releases lifecycle should have a decent knowledge of common security issues and how to avoid them.
Establish standards
A lot of security issues can be avoided with the help of strict coding standards. All the parties should follow the best practices in the industry. Also, they should keep themselves updated on this topic regularly. There should be a universal standard for code quality, and it should be possible to implement code changes seamlessly.
Implement the right set of testing methods
There is an overwhelming number of security tests you can adopt and incorporate into your product development lifecycle. However, choosing the right ones would be the best choice. Here are a few examples best testing methods.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST): Helps you identify vulnerabilities by examining the code.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): Helps administrators identify vulnerabilities by granting them an attacker’s perspective.
Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST): A combination of SAST and DAST. Application performance can be monitored using software instrumentation.
Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP): Detect and resolve threats as they occur using real-time application data independently of an administrator.
Have a comprehensive security approach
Rather than relying completely on security firewalls, implement security measures within the application to eliminate threats and increase security posture. A shared infrastructure with a common perimeter is an easy target for attackers. By securing the application also from the inside, you are adding more layers of protection and discouraging the attackers. Also, this approach augments the philosophy of “shared responsibility”.
DevSecOps vs SecDevOps vs DevOpsSec: Is there a difference?
You might have come across these names while researching something related to secure DevOps. And, you might have wondered why use different names for the same approach? Or are they different from one another? Let’s find answers to these questions.
Are DevSecOps, SecDevOps, and DevOpsSec the same?
No, they are not exactly the same.
Then what’s the difference between DevSecOps, SecDevOps and DevOpsSec?
There is not much difference between these three approaches. However, the wording of the names gives you an idea of what is sacrosanct in each approach.
DevSecOps
DevSecOps is a widely popular approach. Here the emphasis is given to development since “Dev” is positioned first in the name. Security comes second which means that the software should pass security checks before it is pushed to the operation team. This is a common approach among organisations that lack a security focus but still want to integrate security testing into the software development process.
SecDevOps
SecDevOps is also known as rugged DevOps.
Here security is given utmost importance and all decision including design choice, development standards, deployment platforms etc. are made after factoring in security considerations.
While this is the best approach an organisation can adopt considering how crucial security is in today’s world and age, it demands fair support from all members of the team that participate in the product development lifecycle. The members should have a good understanding of security standards and common vulnerabilities. They should also be able to foresee the impact of their decisions on application security, every time they make one.
DevOpsSec
Compared to the other two approaches, this one gives the least importance to security. While something is better than nothing, this approach is nothing but a normal DevOps approach with some security testing implemented at the end. Since security testing is done only after application deployment, the likelihood of the application and its data getting compromised is very high. Therefore, DevOpsSec is the least popular and less preferred approach among all three.
Conclusion
The transition from the Waterfall software development model to agile and then DevOps offered us tremendous advantages. Incorporating security practices into already popular DevOps is a continuation of this positive trend. DevSecOps is fixing the loopholes of DevOps and gradually taking over its position.
Looking for DevOps or DevSecOps team for your next project? Contact us now!
DevOps consulting services are becoming popular day by day. The estimated value of the global DevOps market was USD 4,311.95 Million in 2020. It is expected to cross USD 5,114.57 Million by the end of this year. Considering a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 18.95%, experts have forecasted that the value will reach USD 12,215.54 Million by 2026.
The reason why DevOps has become so popular is that it promotes a culture of trust and risk-sharing between team members. It motivates teams to continuously work together, experiment and shares knowledge to reach a common goal, i.e., make a software product ready as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The statistic shows the importance of DevOps in scaling software development. Courtesy: Statista
As it promotes team play and encourages communication and mutual support, the uncertainty regarding the quality of the end product is minimized. As a result, so many businesses are adopting DevOps at a fast pace to eliminate uncertainty and improve the quality of their products.
“DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to better serve their customers and compete more effectively in the market.”
“A compound of development (Dev) and operations (Ops), DevOps is the union of people, process, and technology to continually provide value to customers.”
The above definitions make it clear that DevOps is not just a method or technique. Rather, it is a combination of principles, practices, methodologies, values, and philosophies that are shared between teams to help them achieve a common goal of creating software with maximum value.
Benefits of DevOps
DevOps offer so many benefits to a business. But what makes DevOps more popular is how crucial these benefits are to a business.
High collaboration
Communication between teams is crucial when developing a product. Developing a web or mobile application is not a simple process. It involves a set of processes such as market study, product conceptualization, product designing, development, deployment, and maintenance. The quality of the final product will depend on the level of mutual collaboration, communication, and integration across various teams who are part of the whole process.
DevOps encourages an environment where the boundaries between each team are reduced. There is a free flow of information and mutual support between teams to ensure that the quality is maintained at each stage of product development. Did your IT team have to send back the module your development team had worked tirelessly for the last few months as there was a conflict between the code and the deployment environment? DevOps will save you next time!
Early conflict detection
DevOps encourages knowledge sharing between teams. Each team will have a clear idea of what must be done and what are the requirements at each stage. These requirements are clearly communicated to other teams. The automated, continuous monitoring along with rigorous testing eliminates the chances for any conflict. And even if a problem arises, it is identified and mitigated in the initial stage itself.
Innovation
DevOps promotes collaboration between teams. When a group of talent comes together, the chances of finding something disruptive is much bigger.
Also, DevOps streamline the whole process of product development starting from market study to deployment and maintenance. The roadmap, automation, rigorous testing, and continuous monitoring help with eliminating extra work and reworks. The teams are more relaxed and there is a good work-life balance that promotes a fresh mindset and innovative thinking.
Faster delivery time
Automated processes, an environment that discourages conflict, quick feedback cycle and continuous delivery models help with transforming software development into a smooth and fast process. Effective communication and continuous testing ensure that quality is not lost in any stages. As conflicts and rework are less to nil, the projects are completed within deadline and with maximum efficiency.
Better quality
From the above points, it is clear that DevOps directly improve the quality of the end product. Rigorous and continuous testing, mutual collaboration, effective communication, continuous feedback cycle and automation are a few of the many factors that contribute to the quality of the product.
Reduced cost
Most businesses wonder whether they can afford DevOps services. This doubt arises from the misunderstanding that the budget can be reduced without affecting the list of features or quality of a product. Chances are, if you are opting for the traditional development process, the cost may increase due to conflicts and reworks. You may end up spending more than forecasted.
DevOps consulting services
To get all the benefits of DevOps, you must find the right DevOps consulting company. However, finding the right one may seem difficult due to the variety of options available in the market. Also, there are certain parameters you must check while choosing a DevOps consulting service. These factors not only help you to find the best DevOps consulting company but also you will be hiring the right one for your requirement.
Finding the right DevOps consulting company
Here is a list of things to check while hiring a DevOps consulting firm.
Identifying your requirement
The first step in choosing a DevOps consulting firm is to identify your requirement. Ask yourself questions like
What are your requirements
How are you planning to meet these requirements?
What is the available solution for your requirements?
What are the pros and cons of each available solution?
Which are the solutions that match your budget and timeline?
For example, if your requirement is to develop a complex product that demands certain technical expertise and faultless implementation, hiring a DevOps expert will be better than hiring a full stack developer.
If you are planning to hire an external agency instead of hiring a team in house, DevOps will be a better choice since it offers a robust feedback cycle along with ensuring that the product is ready as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Expertise
DevOps consulting firms should be an expert in software development and IT operations.
A DevOps consultant usually works on complex projects. Without having a better understanding of the process, technology stacks, methodologies, and operation constraints it will be harder for them to implement a project and achieve the results that are intended.
Also, since a DevOps engineer is most likely to work with an external company, it should be easier for them to understand the current technologies used by the said company, what are the strength and weaknesses of these technologies, and how to improve them to match the actual requirement without increasing the cost to an exorbitant level. The best DevOps companies are a maestro in doing research, analysis, evaluation, and planning.
Communication
Communication plays a large role in any DevOps project. In fact, it is one of the core aspects of DevOps project management.
Since DevOps demand mutual collaboration and knowledge sharing between teams and there is a continuous feedback cycle involved, communicating in a clear and precise manner is very important. Not only that, but a DevOps expert should also be well versed with popular communication and project management tools since most of the communications and monitoring will be done through technology platforms.
Support mentality
What DevOps tries to achieve is a rapport between different teams in the same project. It helps with finding innovative ideas and helps with avoiding conflicts and glitches in product development.
While elimination is a reactive process, avoiding a conflict altogether will need a proactive approach. The approach demands proactive communication and a supportive mentality between team members and different teams. For example, the IT team can help the development team to understand the strength and weaknesses of the client’s IT infrastructure and help them develop codes that are fully compatible with the existing environment. This also demands that each team has expert knowledge and adequate experience in their own field.
Being friendly
Only a friendly environment can promote team collaboration and communication. When team members feel intimidated or not valued it will negatively impact the whole process. It will also add certain biases to the product development cycle and the quality of the final product will be below the bar. So, a DevOps Expert should be friendly in her approach and promotes friendly gestures and expression of gratitude whenever possible.
Professionalism
Friendly yet professional. That should be the description of a DevOps expert.
While friendliness encourages communication and feedback, overdoing it may add certain biases to the product development cycle. For example, as a DevOps professional your duty is to ensure that a software product is ready as quickly and efficiently as possible. It demands keeping up with deadlines, monitoring resource allocation, monitoring the status of tasks assigned to team members and checking and verifying quality at every stage of the development. These duties demand an honest approach towards identifying problems and solving them as early as possible. But biases due to lack of professionalism and being overfriendly may result in overlooking these issues and the quality of the product will suffer.
Willingness to learn
A good DevOps expert never stops learning.
Most likely that a DevOps engineer will be continuously exposed to different problems and different teams each time they take up a project. Since the core philosophy of DevOps is to work as a single team trying to achieve the same goal, each member of the team should have a proper understanding of the whole project. They should also understand why certain things must be done in certain ways and how not following the guidelines will jeopardize their team or the next team in the product development cycle.
Empathy and patience
Software development is a complex process. It involves different stages, continuous feedback, and several iterations. Not all members of the team will be familiar with the scope of the project especially when there is a junior member involved. Since DevOps demands different teams, who may be an expert in their field but lack knowledge in other aspects of software development, to work together, it is likely that some members have some catching up to do. They may need more time for getting familiar with the project or need occasional technical assistance from an experienced member.
A good DevOps consultant will take notice of this and try to solve it in the most effective way possible. It is because she understands that when it comes to teamwork, there are no individual problems but problems that are common to everyone as a team. This is also why a good DevOps engineer can easily help their clients with solving the technological challenges they are facing.
Conclusion
The popularity of DevOps is increasing day by day. It is mainly due to the advantages DevOps is offering compared to other product development methodologies.
Hiring DevOps consulting services helps businesses to develop software products as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, the success of the projects will depend on factors like whether the business was able to hire the right DevOps consulting service. AlignMinds has more than 12 years of experience in working with projects that are varying in scale, technology, and complexity. If you are looking for a DevOps expert for your next project, contact us.
Ever since companies and businesses identified the strength of enterprise applications to achieve their corporate goals, the enterprise software market has experienced tremendous growth. The market revenue has doubled within the last decade and it is expected to reach $429 billion in 2021. It is a 7.2% growth from last year. As more businesses are adopting technology at a faster pace than ever, due to COVID and the change it caused in work culture and market, this number may reach double digits this year.
Usually, a wide range of applications is considered under the term “enterprise applications”. It includes ERP software(Enterprise Resource Planning software), accounting software, Human Resource Management(HRM) software, Office suits, Customer Relationship Management(CRM) software, Supply Chain Management(SCM) Software, Business Process Management(BPM) software, Business Intelligence(BI) software, etc.
The main difference between enterprise applications (also known as Enterprise Application Software (EAS)) and other applications is that the former is mainly used by organizations rather than individual users. A collection of such software applications is known as an enterprise system. Such systems can undertake a large number of organizational operations with the purpose to maximize the quality of business and management reporting tasks. The ability to process data at a high speed and the advantage of being deployed across a variety of networks help enterprise applications meet their purposes.
What are enterprise applications?
Enterprise applications are computer software that are integrated with all phases of an enterprise’s operations to facilitate cooperation and coordination of work across all levels.
An ideal enterprise application should,
Control all major business processes in real-time.
Make complex operations easy and simple.
Save time and human resources.
Can be easily integrated into a variety of networks.
Advantages of enterprise applications
Sharing of data
Enterprise application software increases interoperability between the departments of an organization. It integrates a variety of operations and their respective applications with IT structure, making data sharing fast and efficient. Based on their user level, all the employees of the organization will have access to all these data and applications.
Easy management
As information exchange and management are improved, the management will have better data and control over the business processes. Enterprise applications make it easier for them to analyze where they stand as a business, and what improvements they can make to achieve their corporate goals.
Easy workflow
As information is readily available, and enterprise applications make technology integration a lot easier, most of the workflow within an organization can be automated. For example, the employee database can be integrated with attendance and payroll software to help the HR department. As most CRM applications store and update customer data in real-time, they can be integrated with marketing tools to automate promotional campaigns.
Increasing efficiency
The availability of information in real-time and the opportunity to automate most of the workflow improve an organization’s overall efficiency. More tasks can be executed with comparatively fewer resources and the margin of error can be reduced to a bare minimum. Since a common workflow can be implemented across the organization, there will be better interoperability between departments.
Competitive edge
Increased efficiency and reduced operating costs due to the introduction of enterprise applications offer an organization with competitive advantages.
Simplify business processes
Normally an organization has two major processes it has to take care of internally. They are day-to-day operations and achieving their long-term goals.
As stated earlier, with the help of enterprise applications, you can automate most of the day-to-day operations and backend work. The recording of all the information by the enterprise software enables the organization with real-time data that they can use to achieve their long-term goals.
Save up cost
Since enterprise applications enable automation and most of the tasks are performed electronically, an organization can save up on their operating costs by a big margin. The demand for fewer human interventions combined with information being recorded and exchanged electronically brings down the cost to optimum level without compromising on efficiency.
Lower time and efforts
By enabling automation of operations, enterprise applications help with reducing the time needed to complete tasks. Also, there is less human intervention needed comparing to a traditional business.
Increase opportunities
A reduced operational cost will help with investment opportunities. It enables funding needed for scaling the business and since most of the operations are now automated, an expansion for the business will be much easier.
Easy adoption
An organization that utilizes the benefits of enterprise applications will have a strong IT structure. As such organizations are technologically strong, adopting new technologies will be easier for them. Also, since information is stored and processed electronically, more tools and applications can be integrated into the existing system to boost productivity and efficiency.
Adopt enterprise applications for your business
The ever-growing challenges in the business world are forcing companies to adopt technology at a faster pace. Moving away from traditional methods and adopting leveraging technology has helped companies to not only cut down the competition but also save up on their operating cost. The increasing demand for technology solutions by such future realistic companies has driven up the growth of enterprise applications development. Nowadays the demand is equally or more than equally met by enterprise application development companies whose services are available across the globe.
The improved availability of supply has benefited the technology industry and companies alike. However, due to the same reason, some companies are feeling it difficult to choose the best enterprise application development company for themselves.
So, how do you choose the best enterprise app development company for your organization?
Hire the best enterprise app development company
There are a few important points to consider while choosing an enterprise app development company. They are
Nature of the requirement
You can be looking for enterprise application development services for internal purposes or you may be a part of an organization that wants to develop a product to later sell it in the market. Most of the time, just like how different the nature of the requirement is, the approach and parameters for choosing a technology partner should also be different.
When you are developing an enterprise application for your organization’s internal purposes, you have to consider things like what would be the objective of the solution, what are your organization long term goals, what growth and changes you are expecting in the future, the company culture, the size of the organization, the internal policies of your organization, organization hierarchy, and communication flow, etc.
However, when you are developing a product to sell in the market, you must consider the demand in the market, existing and future competition, features of the products competitors are offering, development cost and sale value, revenue potential, data collection, and privacy policy and many other things which are totally different from the above one.
Usually, it is difficult to find an enterprise application developer who has expertise in both these fields. So, the first step you need to take when you are looking for enterprise application development services is to identify your requirements.
Organization goals
Consider what are your future goals, both long term and short term.
Is it cutting down the operating cost with the help of technology? Or is it to expand your operations to a global scale within the next 5 or 10 years? What is your expansion plan? Have you considered the peculiarities of new geographies and whether the solution can meet the special requirement of the same?
These questions are important because when you are looking for enterprise application development services, the company you are going to hire should analyze and understand all these aspects of your business and help you with achieving your goals. In fact, the company and the solution they are going to develop for you should help you with achieving your goal faster and more efficiently.
Organization growth
When you are hiring an enterprise application development company, you should consider your organization’s growth over time. The service provider should have a good understanding and prior experience in developing large-scale enterprise applications. The solution should be easy to scale and futureproof. Additionally, it is better to choose an app development company that can offer you long-term support.
Data policy
Always choose an enterprise application developer who understands different data policies and their benefits. Protection of data and privacy is a major concern for individuals and corporates alike. You should partner with an agency that can use data effectively to maximize the benefits of the product and at the same time protect it from intrusion, misuse, and legal suits.
Technology expertise
The development company should have expert knowledge on all the aspects of technology and where the industry is heading. They should be able to suggest the best solution after evaluating your requirements, business nature, and market trends.
Choosing the right platform is most important in any type of application development. The right choice will improve efficiency, save up cost and avoid any bottleneck that otherwise would arise in the future due to some technology being outdated or replaced.
Another reason why you should choose an expert technology partner is that enterprise applications are required to be compatible with many other modules/applications that are already used by an organization or will be used in the future. Technology expertise is much needed when it comes to optimizing a product for cross-compatibility. Furthermore, if you are looking to migrate from legacy applications, their expertise will make it easy to do so.
Experience
Let us acknowledge that great ideas bring no benefits if they are executed poorly. Faultless executions are the result of practice and experience. Even though the stages of enterprise application development look simple and familiar, it may be challenging for a new app development agency to execute them. It is mainly due to each business being different, their objectives and goals being different, and the varying micro and macro variables that affect the business.
If we are going to develop an enterprise application to sell in the market, the development company should understand the market first. Each market will be different from one other. A developer who has already worked for a similar company or the same market will have a huge advantage over an app development company with no prior experience. The former one can understand the challenges much easier and they can incorporate countermeasures in the initial stages of product design itself.
Conclusion
Moving from legacy applications to enterprise applications will bring you so many benefits. However, the expertise of an experienced enterprise application developer is much needed to reap the full benefits. AlignMinds has more than 12 years of experience in developing technology solutions for startups to enterprises. If you are looking for a renowned technology partner for your next project, contact us now!
Choosing the right development framework has a major role in deciding the success of any digital solution. Web development is not exempted from this. If you are a business that has always been cautious about choosing the right platform for your technology solution, you might have come across Laravel, a trending technology framework that is getting popular among businesses like you. If that is true, you might have also wondered whether to hire Laravel developers for your next project.
Here, as a technology partner for startups to enterprises for more than 12 years, we are trying to list out the benefits of hiring Laravel developers for your next project.
Is Laravel the right platform for businesses?
As a serious business that has its own goals to achieve in the long term, you want someone who is an expert in the latest technologies as your technology partner. Especially since, due to the ever-changing nature of the technology industry, new technologies are being introduced every day and existing technologies are being updated or outdated.
As a web development company, we have seen a new trend in the industry, The rise of a new framework that is often preferred by businesses and developers alike. The framework is none other than Laravel.
There has been a huge rise in the popularity of Laravel in the last decade. Compared to PHP, the programming language this framework is based upon, Laravel is a new kid in the block. However, due to the features and benefits it offers, more developers are choosing Laravel over other PHP frameworks nowadays.
The benefits are not exclusive to developers. The huge rise in demand for Laravel based solutions underlines that businesses are also getting benefited from this framework.
What is Laravel?
Laravel is a free, open-source PHP web framework, intended for the development of web applications following the model–view–controller architectural pattern and based on Symfony. It is primarily used for building custom web apps using PHP. The advantage of Laravel is that it handles routing, templating, HTML, and authentication perfectly. Laravel is a server-side framework, and it focuses heavily on data manipulation.
Model–view–controller
The Model-view-controller is a design pattern used for designing user interfaces that divides the codes into three categories, Model, View, and Controller, and each category of code has its own purposes. For example, the model deals with raw data, logic, and rules of an application. View deals with the representation of information and the controller ties together the model and view. It is the controller that accepts user inputs and converts them to commands for model or view. While the model is the central component, the controller is the brain of the application.
Laravel is based on the same “Model-view-controller” architecture and functions in the same way.
Why hire Laravel developers?
The reactive businesses change their business approach due to the pressure from the market. They introduce new products or services because the demand for the existing ones is on the decline, or their competitors are offering better ones. There can also be other reasons like the cost of the current business model is increasing and they are forced to come up with a new one. The market preferences have changed, and they must analyze the new trends and align their products and services to meet the latest demands. Since these businesses are led by the market, they have least to no control over the industry they are operating in.
On the other hand, the proactive business is the one that sets new trends in the market. They invent new products to create fresh demands in the market. They come up with unique solutions to win the attention of the market and increase the demand for their existing products and services. They keep on rejuvenating the industry with the help of the latest technologies and they are always ahead of their competitors.
Among these two, which one will be more likely to survive as a business in the long run?
The answer will be proactive businesses.
As a business, if you want to win the market and have an advantage over your competitors, you must be proactive in your approach.
Technology is the best tool available to any business that wants to be competitive in their industry. As a competitive business, you are not using technology to survive in the market. You are leveraging the latest technology to cut down your operating cost, maximize customer interaction, satisfy your customer’s needs, and inventing fresh methods to reach more customers. The right technology can help you with saving resources like money and time and increase your profit margin.
So, if you are a business that falls into the second category and is looking to build a web solution, Laravel is the right choice for you. This PHP framework comes with a ton of features that helps business and developers alike. These features make the development process easier and when the process becomes easier the cost and time will be reduced. So, if you decide to hire Laravel experts, you can have the best solution at an affordable price within a short time as a business.
So, let’s discuss the features of Laravel that make the framework the best choice for most businesses.
Features of Laravel
The question of whether to hire Laravel developers is not a brainer for most businesses due to the advantages the framework offers. The main advantages of Laravel are;
Better performance
Most businesses hire Laravel developers because the framework has certain performance advantages over other frameworks in the market.
Laravel comes with native support for Memcached and Radis caching systems. The benefit of such systems is that they help you to build applications quickly by storing diverse cached objects so there is no need to rebuild the configuration for every request. The availability of route optimization helps you with maximizing your app performance even if it has lots of routes. The scalability and multilingual support make Laravel one of the best PHP frameworks to work with if you are expecting more users in the future.
Laravel also offers features like Image optimization, limiting the number of plugins, composer load optimization, precompiling assets, etc. to improve the performance of your application.
Object-oriented libraries
Laravel boasts of having Object-oriented and pre-installed libraries. The availability of such libraries makes Laravel one of the easiest frameworks to use for complex solutions. Laravel programmers can easily integrate functions like Bcrypt hashing, checking active users, CSRF (Cross-site Request Forgery) protection, password reset, encryption, etc to the solution with the help of these libraries.
Security
Security is a major concern for any business. Offenses like Data theft, cybercrime, leaking personal data of users, etc. are increasing day by day. Businesses must make sure that the solution they are going to develop and use is immune from such threats.
The good news is, if your decision is to hire Laravel developers, you will no longer have to worry about application security.
The framework supports salted and hashed passwords. This means that it will be harder for hackers to decipher your passwords. Also, with Laravel, implementing authentication is amazingly simple. The framework comes with all settings preconfigured. If you want to make changes to the authentication logic or process, it is easily doable since many documentations are readily available.
The CSRP protection offered by Laravel helps you with safeguarding your application from cross-site request forgery. So, fraudsters will not be able to get access to your application by running unauthorized commands through an authenticated user.
The use of prepared SQL commands by Laravel avoids injection attacks; so, it becomes impossible for untrusted inputs to alter the execution of a command in your web app.
Artisan
Laravel comes with a command-line interface called “Artisan” that provides you with several helpful commands to develop your application easily. Every command has a help screen that shows the command’s available arguments and options. Artisan is powered by the robust Symfony Console component. The availability of such a powerful tool makes the application development process easier and less time-consuming. As a result, when hiring Laravel developers, you can expect a quick turnaround time.
Better user experience
User experience is a crucial factor that decides the success of an application. According to a survey conducted by PWC,
“32% of all customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience.”
In this online age, most customers are interacting with businesses online. In fact, the market is rapidly moving towards digital services and products where all the interactions between customers and businesses are done solely online.
Do you think it is possible for a business to survive in the industry without giving enough attention to user experience these days?
Fortunately, PHP frameworks like Laravel offer more features to improve user experience. Laravel uses a template engine called “Blade” that simplifies the development process and makes your application lightweight and easy to use for the end-users. The intuitive interfaces offered by the engine helps you with building your own unique brand image and giving your customers an experience that sets you apart from your competitors.
Better database migration
Database is a crucial component of any application. If not taken care of properly, it can render the whole application useless within a fraction of the time. One of the challenges faced by developers and businesses alike is migrating databases between different environments and syncing them between development machines. Since Laravel offers a convenient way to deal with database migration and management, the pool of potential problems is further reduced.
Automatic package discovery
Laravel has a user-friendly feature known as “Automatic Package discovery” that automatically identifies the packages which the users might want to install. If you are someone who wants to disable this option, Laravel also lets you do so.
Community
Laravel has one of the most active communities. This means that the technology is still on a growing stage and there is no sign of it fading away anytime soon. While developers can seek help from the community on complex problems related to coding and development, as a business you can ensure the solution you will have in hand will be future proof. Also, such communities make it easier to find the Laravel experts you are looking for.
Who should hire Laravel developers?
As stated earlier, if you are a business that wants to be competitive in your industry, it is better to hire Laravel experts for your next projects. The advantages of Laravel – most of them are stated above – make it one of the easiest and wise decisions you can ever take.
If you are a business that operates in banking, entertainment, healthcare, eCommerce, or other industries with high traffic where a lot of data processing and complexities are involved, Laravel will be the best option for you. Features like Service Container, Event Broadcasting, baked-in queue systems, etc. helps Laravel to handle these functions better than any other frameworks available in the market.
Laravel also supports microservices architecture. This means that when you are hiring Laravel developers, you can create one massive application that comprises several independently functioning modules. Such applications are efficient, robust, and can handle multiple functions simultaneously at the same time without compromising on processing time.
Laravel can be integrated with existing content management systems like WordPress or Drupal. You can also build content-based applications entirely from scratch using Laravel. So Laravel is also the best choice for entertainment businesses, news portals, etc.
Popular systems built using Laravel
Due to the wide range of advantages stated above, Laravel is used by many businesses that spread across different industries. If you are looking to hire Laravel developers, you must be interested in knowing a few of such popular solutions built on Laravel.
MyRank
MyRank is a popular e-learning platform that is built using Laravel. Being an e-learning platform, one of the major requirements for MyRank is scalability; so that it can add more scholars and more learning resources to the platform. Choosing Laravel over other frameworks has helped MyRank to meet its requirements easily.
Contendoo is a platform for businesses to find the right talent for their content needs. It acts as a bridge between business and freelance content creators. The platform features a variety of talent including translators, content writers, designers, content strategists, marketing specialists, etc.
Businesses can choose talent based on subject expertise and language. Contendoo handles management, invoicing, and payment for the businesses so that they can have all the advantages of in-house and freelance combined.
Such a complex solution demands innovative features and third-party integration. By choosing Laravel to build the platform, Contentoo made the development process easier and less time-consuming.
Other features of the platform include a secure messaging system, contact management, and a reminder system to implement deadlines.
October is an open-source self-hosted content management system based on the Laravel web application framework. With October, even users with the least technical knowledge can manage page contents with the WYSIWYG editor. They can manage images, videos, and other files, and even edit website menus with a simple visual interface. It is fully compatible with the PHP composer package manager. Adding new functionalities and configuring them is easy due to CMS page components. October supports CDN and image cropping and has a ton of plugins that can be integrated into the platforms.
The purpose of any forum is to host engaging conversations online. To enable it, the platform has to be fast (so conversation happens instantly), secure (users’ data should be secure), reliable (downtime can affect user experience and it will also render the platform useless), responsive (users can engage in a conversation from a wide choice of devices; even while on move) and good looking.
Flarum is one such platform that is also modern, simple, fast, and free. All the advantages of Flarum are made possible due to the capabilities and huge potential of Laravel. By hiring Laravel developers, you can start building simple discussion platforms and scale them to complex solutions with the help of numerous tools and plugins supported by the framework.
One of the popular forms built using Laravel is Laracasts.
Invoice Ninja
Invoice Ninja is an accounting solution that offers a ton of features to its clients.
The features include invoicing, tracking payments and expenses, auto-billing, recurring invoices, creation and sending of work proposals, time tracking, easy sharing of invoices, supports for different types of attachments, custom design for invoices, auto-reminder, payment notification, bulk sending, voice commands and a lot more. You can see the complete list of features offered by Invoice Ninja here.
Invoice Ninja is one of the best examples that showcase the real capabilities of Laravel.
Tably
Tably is solely built for restaurants to help them with online reservation, reservation management, walk-in management, and event booking. The solution automates most of the routine operations in a restaurant and helps the owners to solely focus on the actual business. Tably is one of the best examples of how Laravel can be used to build solutions that are specially designed for certain industries. It shows the versatility and robustness of the framework.
BonAppetour is a solution built using Laravel to leverage the potential of culinary tourism. It connects travelers and hosts and offers them a platform for finding local homemade dishes. The advantages of Laravel made it easier to store, manage and display the huge database of local hosts in a meaningful way that helps travelers to find their next stay, easily.
Bagisto is a free & open-source Ecommerce Platform built on Laravel.
It enables you to create your own free eCommerce website and scale it is using various extensions. The main features of Bagisto include sales through multiple channels, customers and groups, various payment modes, custom attributes, insights and reports, localization, multi-currency support, access level control, and so on. Bagistop proves that if you want to build an eCommerce solution, Laravel is one of the best choices for you.
Canvas is a minimal blogging app built by Todd Austin using Laravel. It features writing in markdown with the Summernote WYSIWYG which also supports autosaves, a media uploader, post tags, and post scheduling. Canvas is a simple to use yet scalable solution that underlines the value of Laravel as a flexible framework.
If you are a competitive business that is looking to develop an innovative web application, Laravel will be your best choice. The advantages offered by Laravel over other frameworks make hiring Laravel developers for your next project a no-brainer.
Want to hire the best Laravel developers in the industry? Contact us now. We have more than 12 years of experience in developing trendsetting yet cost-effective web and mobile solutions for startups to enterprises.
The internet has revolutionized the lifestyle of humans to a great extent.
A British computer scientist named Sir Tim Berners-Lee paved the next step in internet technology. His invention, popularly known as the WWW (World Wide Web) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) transformed the usage of the internet to a whole new level.
The last couple of years have seen many improvements in internet technology. The invention of the WWW led to the development of web pages. Later it developed into the combination of web pages known as a website.
Web applications or web apps is the most recent advancement in this field.
Websites and web apps have made tasks such as booking tickets and buying commodities much easier.
But what is a web app?
What is a web app or web application?
A web app uses a remote server to store data and has functions and interface similar to a native app. Users can access a web app through the internet. It is done with the help of a compatible web browser which is already installed on the device.
A web app is different from mobile applications installed on mobile phones.
Web apps are popular among individual users and business firms due to its easy access through mobile phones. eCommerce shops, webmails, social networking sites such as Facebook are some of the businesses that use web apps. As the majority of people use mobile phones, business firms hire web application developers to change their websites into a more interactive web app. Offering their services and products through a more user-friendly and preferred platform helps these business firms to widen their reach.
There are two types of web applications- static web apps and dynamic web apps
A static web app is a basic type of web app. Interactivity features are less as compared to a dynamic web app.
A dynamic web is much more complex than a static web app. Updations are easily done in dynamic web apps.
What’s a website?
A website is a collection of related web pages.
The interlinked web pages of the website have a single domain name. Website is publicly accessible. Individuals or business firms create websites to carry out many functions such as business branding, to showcase and sell their products etc.
Now, a question may arise.
If a web app and websites are using the same basic structure, what is the difference between the two?
Difference between a web app and a website
Web apps differ from websites in terms of features and functions. Web apps have interactive elements while a website has static content.
Web apps offer more features and options than a website.
Regular updations are necessary for websites to keep the content authentic.
The user can control and use the features of the web app.
Storing and accessing customized data, according to the needs of the user is possible in a web app. But websites do not have this option.
Is web app and mobile app the same?
Difference between a web app and a mobile app
Native mobile apps are those developed for a particular platform such as Android or iOS.
Some of the difference between a web app and a native mobile app is as follows:
The development cost of native mobile apps is higher than that of developing a web app. This is because native apps use platform-specific designs for development.
To develop web apps, You need to hire a web app development company or web app developers who are proficient in programming languages such as JavaScript, CSS or HTML5 etc. For native apps that will be working on an Android platform, mobile app developers widely use Android Studio for development. An iOS native mobile app developer uses Swift or Objective-C to develop an app for the Apple platform.
Templates are available for the web app developers but do not have access to any development kits as available for native mobile apps. Web apps are easier to build than a native mobile app.
Native mobile apps have more advanced features than a web app.
There is no need to download the web app as other mobile apps. You only need a compatible web browser to interact with a web app.
The loading time of a web app is slower when compared to a native mobile app.
‘Progressive web app’ is another type of web application that is widely used nowadays as it is having the qualities of both native and web-based apps. Progressive web apps can work in low connectivity and load faster as a native app.
Why do businesses now prefer to hire web application developers over websites developers?
There are many advantages of using a web app.
Advantages of web apps
As web apps use a supported internet browser to function, there is no need to download the web app. Thus, a web app does not affect the external or internal storage of the mobile phone.
A user always has access to the updated version of a web app. This is because changes made in the server get reflected in the web app. The user does not need to update a web app as compared to a native mobile app.
A business firm using a web app can easily change the contents according to their growth and change in demand when they hire web app developers who are having the required expertise in this field. Web apps are easily customizable and scalable, so a business can add or remove functions from the app within a short time.
As mentioned earlier, web apps store information in a remote server. So if the device gets stolen, the user can retrieve his/her personalized data from another device with the help of a supported web browser.
Many types of mobile phones with different screen sizes are available in the market. When you hire a web app development company with the right talent, it makes a web app equally functional and customizable for a wide range of devices.
Websites and web apps are both cost-efficient ways to deliver your content to the users.
But which is a better option for your company- website or a web app?
Which is better: a website or web app?
There are some factors to keep in mind while choosing a website or web app for your business. To an extent, cost and features have a role in deciding whether to go for a web app or a website.
Websites, compared to web apps, do not integrate well with other online tools or third-party apps. Integrating with other software is one of the basic functions of a web app. Web apps provide a better user experience than websites by combining with third-party applications.
All websites need a good internet connection to function. But web apps have offline compatibility. This is a function which most users prefer while browsing the internet.
Personalizing web apps based on user needs is a comparatively easy process. Different users see different content while using a web app that gets personalized to his/ her needs. A website hosts content that is publicly accessible by any viewers. As usually, personalization is not possible, every user sees the same information on a website.
A variety of functions are available in web apps and they are more responsive to customer choices. Users can manipulate data while using a web app and receive information based on their request. Websites are usually not that responsive to a user’s request.
A website is a good choice while looking for cost, cutting strategies. If you are looking for developing more interactive, secure and personalized content for your business, opt to hire web app developers. Also, a web app is a feasible option in the long run.
But what are the important points to keep in mind when you hire web app developers?
How to hire web app developers?
It is a simple task to hire web app developers if you have a correct and detailed analysis of your business challenges and purpose.
While hiring web app developers, you should give preferences to the one that uses modern technology and development methods. Hire web app developers who know and follow the latest trends in the industry.
Hire web app developers who are having experience and expertise in their field of work. This will help in ensuring that the app will meet all the industry standards.
Checking skills and qualifications is important when you hire a web app developer. There are mainly three types of web app developers.
They are:
Front-end web app developer
Back-end web app developer
Full-stack web app developer
Each of them has different job roles.
1. Front-end web app developer
Front-end is the part of the web app where the users directly interact with.
Front-end web development is also known as client-side development. The tools required to develop web front-end constantly changes. This is the main challenge faced by front-end web developers.
Front-end web app developers develop the design and layout features of the web app. Hire web app developers who have exceptional working skills at the front-end to make the interface of the web app an eye-catching one.
The main duties of a front-end web developer include the following
Front-end web app developers analyse the UI/UX designs and make sure if it is technically feasible.
Client-side development also finds suitable ways to optimize web application for peak speed and performance.
Front-end web app developers confirm all user input and submit it to the back-end for further actions
2. Back-end web app developer
The back-end is what determines how a web app works. This part of the website is responsible for the structure of the application.
Back-end development is also called server-side development. The back-end web developers write the code that helps the front-end communicate with the database.
Some of the responsibilities of back-end web app developer are as follows:
The back-end web app developer creates and maintains the server-side of the application or website. Back-end web app developer is also responsible for checking and resolving errors at the back-end.
The back-end web app developer makes sure that data and other services are delivered promptly when requested by the front-end.
The creation and integration of the database are managed by the back-end web developers.
3. Full-stack web app developer
Web app developers who have expertise in developing both front-end and back-end are called full-stack developers.
You will get a full package when you hire web app developers who have very good knowledge about front-end and the back-end. Which means that hiring full-stack web app developers is the most suitable option for startups.
The main objectives of a full-stack web developer are as follows:
As they are well-versed in the client-side and server-side languages, they can analyse and provide solutions to problems in the server, network or hosting environments.
Hiring full-stack web developers help to cut costs and improve efficiency. Since you hire web app developers who have the expertise to handle both the front-end and back-end, the cost of hiring separate web developers can be reduced.
The workflow of the team improves when you hire full-stack web app developers as there is no need to collaborate with more members of a team and there is no chance for error due to a flaw in the communication.
There are three choices you can opt for when you hire web application developers for your business. You can pick any one of the following according to your requirements and budget:
Hire a web app development company
Hire a freelance web app developer
Hire a dedicated web app development team
But, which is the best option?
Hiring web app development company vs freelancer vs dedicated development team?
To choose the most suitable option for your company, you need to get a clear understanding of these three choices.
Let’s start with hiring a web app development company.
1. Hiring a web app development company
Mobile phone users are increasing day-by-day. Major companies have turned to concentrate more on developing web apps as it will generate a wide market and reach.
The growing demand for web apps has produced more web app development companies. You will get exceptional web app developers to work on your project when you hire a web app development company.
1.1 Advantages of hiring a web app development company
1.1.1 Hiring a web app development company is time-saving
Hiring a web app development company that has the required experience and expertise in the field of web app development significantly reduces the development time. Understanding and fixing errors become easy or there is no scope for errors while hiring an expert web app development company.
1.1.2 Hiring web app development company helps in developing a more reliable web application
An experienced web development team will help you in creating a perfect web app with the right structure and code. Crashing and breaking issues of a web app is least while hiring a web app development company.
1.1.3 Hiring web app development company gives an insight into the latest technologies
A good web app development company equips itself with the latest technology and tools. So hiring a web app development company also helps you in bringing innovations to your web app that a user would like.
To hire a web app development company that suits your business challenges, consider the following aspects.
1.1.2 Consider these points before hiring a web app development company
Conducting a proper search on the internet helps you in hiring a web app development company which is the best according to your requirements.
After searching the internet, compile a list of the best web app development companies based on their years of experience and expertise, ratings and reviews of past clients, awards and other recognition etc. Hire a web app development company, which is the best according to this evaluation.
Contacting the past clients will help you in knowing more about the web app development company, you chose to hire. Enquiring about the work satisfaction of the former clients will help you in your decision.
Hire a web app development company according to your budget. Pricing is always the deciding factor. Price is decided mainly by three factors
The experience of the company
The expertise of the employers
Technology used
A right-minded web app development company follows all coding standards and guidelines. So hire a web development company that writes clean and consistent codes.
2. Hiring freelance web app developers
Hiring freelance web app developers is the best option if yours is a startup business and if you are looking for cost-cutting strategies.
Searching the internet helps you hire freelance web app developers with the required skill set. Some of the search platforms and coding communities that help you in hiring exceptional freelance web app developers include DevTeam.Space, Upwork, Hired, StackOverflow etc.
Your professional contacts from the industry can help you to hire web app developers who do freelancing. Compare their rate and quality of work before hiring a freelance web app developer.
Some of the advantages of hiring a freelance web app developer are as follows
2.1 Advantages of hiring a freelance web app developer
2.1.1 Less project turnaround time
An experienced freelance web app developer is always working on one or another project. This makes him/her more experienced than a fresher. Freelance web app developers do not need to spend time on routine tasks such as documentation and communication like employees in a company. This helps in the significant reduction of project turnaround time.
2.1.2 Knows the latest trends in web app development
Due to their continuous exposure in the field of web app development, freelance web app developers are up-to-date with the latest trends. This will help in providing a good user experience to users.
2.1.3 A good contact with expert web designers and testers
Experienced freelance web app developers will have contact with many web designers and application testers who are exceptional in their work. Freelance web app developers can team up with web designers and testers to develop the perfect web app for your business.
2.2 Consider these points before hiring freelance web app developers
Always conduct initial screening and tests before hiring a freelance web app developer. There are many freshers who take up freelancing and poses as an expert. Hire web app developers with the necessary skill-set. Also, check their previous works before hiring a freelance web app developer.
While hiring a freelance web app developer through the internet, closely examine the ratings and reviews of the previous employers. The rate of hiring freelance web app developers also differs based on the geographical location. So consider the geographical location as well.
Freelance web app developers work hourly or per the project basis. Hire web app developers according to your project needs.
Hire freelance web app developers who provide proper support and maintenance after the deployment of the web app.
3. Hiring a dedicated web app development team
Hiring a dedicated web app development team is the best choice for developing a quality web application at a low cost.
Opt for hiring a dedicated web app development team if the project needs to be started soon. As a dedicated web app development team is equipped with a workspace, the project can start the next moment an agreement is signed.
Hiring a dedicated web app development team have some of the following advantages.
3.1 Advantages of hiring dedicated web app development team
3.1.1 Flexible and transparent hiring process
You can directly take part in the selection of the team members while hiring a dedicated web app development team. You can also increase or decrease the number of team members at any stage of development.
3.1.2 You will have total control of the dedicated web app development team
You have direct control over the team members. A project manager is always available for proper communication. This helps in delivering proper updates and project status. You can also make changes in the requirements of the project at any time.
3.1.3 Security is not compromised
A chance for data breach is minimal as you are directly involved in every stage of development. Hiring a dedicated web app development team that follows strong data encryption protocols ensures better security.
3.1.4 Hiring dedicated web app development team is highly economical
If you hire the dedicated web app development team for a project, he/ she needs to pay only for that individual project. You do not need to spend money on bonus and other perks of the employees.
A dedicated web app development team also updates themselves with the most modern tools, technology and training. So there is no need to spend money on these aspects.
3.2 Consider these points before hiring dedicated web app development team
Always verify the quality and expertise of the dedicated web app development team by contacting past clients. An initial screening that consists of tests and interviews of the team members help you to check whether they are the right candidate for your project.
While hiring a dedicated web app development team from another country, consider the difference in the time zone. It is better to confirm the availability of the team according to the time zone you prefer. Also, make sure that the dedicated web app development team is having proper communication skills.
From the very initial stage itself, you should make clear the requirements and intended results of the project to the team members. This will reduce confusions and help with developing a perfect development roadmap for the project.
Best place to hire web app developers
When you hire web application developers of your choice, you should have a clear-cut idea about your project- size, scope, intended results and future developments.
The internet can help you hire web app developers who are having the skill-set and experience you are looking for. When you want to hire web app development companies and dedicated web app development teams, you can also search B2B directories such as Clutch and GoodFirms.
Before you choose to search and hire web application developers from B2B directories, you can create a framework which includes all the relevant details. This can include budget, salary, required skill-set etc. This will help you to cross-check your requirements while searching for hiring a suitable web app developer.
Always double-check the reviews and ratings before hiring a web app developer considering that there are web app developers with fake reviews. Reliability and quality should be your prime concerns while hiring web app developers.
To hire a web app developer, you can also seek help from your professional contacts. This is a more reliable option than the internet because your contacts might have worked with a web app developer in the past and know the quality of their work.
Hire web app developers who have the perfect knowledge of programming languages and understand UI/UX and design principles.
You can hire a web app development company from another country or can develop your own in-house team. There are many advantages and disadvantages when you opt to hire web app developers from another country and when you develop your web app through your in-house team.
Developing web app: in-house vs offshore team
An in-house team is your internal team, where you hire web app developers and other team members such as project manager, UI/UX designer, QA analyst etc. to work for your company.
When you hire web app developers for working on your project from another country, it is offshoring. India and China are some examples of Asian countries that are famous for offshoring.
There are many merits and demerits for an in-house team and offshore web app development team.
1. Benefits of in-house web app development teams
Your internal team devotes all their working time towards the development of your web application. This will ensure that the web app is completed under the specified time.
You are in direct control of the in-house app development team. You have total control of the workflow and will have an insight into the daily status of the work. There are no focus issues for your employees as they work only for you.
You can individually give salary to your team members according to their performance, expertise and experience.
An in-house web app development team will understand the target audience, goals, brand voice and competitors in the field of work better than an offshore web app development team.
In-house web app development team does everything promptly. As everyone is working in the same office, approvals and reviews happen in a time-bound manner and at a faster rate.
While developing a project with your in-house team, you can have any number of revision checks that increases the quality of the web app. But when hiring a web app development company, you are having limitations of the budget, so you can have only a certain number of revisions.
2. Disadvantages of in-house web app development
2.1 Recruitment
The main disadvantage of an in-house app development team is that it takes time for the recruitment process.
To hire web app developers and other team members, you need to have an initial screening such as tests and interviews. After hiring the right team members, you need to give them proper training for the execution of the project. This increases time and budget.
2.2 Cost
Hiring in-house web app development teams are more expensive than hiring web app development companies and hiring dedicated web app development teams.
You will need infrastructure and office space. You will also incur extra expenses like taxes, rent etc. You also need to pay for various types of software and hardware that are essential for work. There are also expenses for maintaining an in-house development team.
2.3 The team
When an important member of the in-house team resigns, you may need to put the project on hold.
You can only resume the project only after finding a replacement. You may also need to train the employee, which further increases time.
2.4 Expertise
If you hire web app developers without the proper knowledge or expertise, it will have negative impacts on the project.
You may not deliver a quality web app if the employees are not up to the mark. Costs could also go up unexpectedly as you may need to give more training to the employees who are not up to the mark.
Hiring an offshore web app development team makes up for some of the disadvantages posed by in-house web app development teams. The advantages of an offshore web app development team are as follows.
3. Advantages of offshore web app development team
You get access to a good number of talents while hiring offshore web app development teams. You can hire web app developers who can build quality web applications at a low cost.
The vendor company will take care of project management activities such as human resource management, hiring and onboarding employees etc.
There is no need to spend money on office rents, recruitment and training, insurance benefits, provident funds etc. while hiring an offshore web app development team. This will drastically reduce the cost and time needed to develop a web app for you.
Hiring an offshore web app development company is very beneficial for a start-up. A startup has less workforce than an established firm. They can save a lot of time and money on hiring and managing manpower. Thus, they can concentrate more on the actual business.
Hiring an offshore web app development company can help you analyse the competitors in the field. As an offshore web app development company will have an understanding of the global market, they can have a better evaluation of the competition. They have professionals who are working in the field for many years. With their help, you can develop one of the best web apps using the latest technology, market data and the newest trend among consumers.
4. Disadvantages of offshore web app development team
4.1 Time Zone
You and the offshore web app development company are in different time zones.
This is one of the major drawbacks of hiring an offshore web app development team. Reporting issues to the web app development team and getting them solved will take time.
4.2 Communication
While hiring an offshore web app development team, always give importance to communication. English is commonly used by offshore web app development companies to communicate with you. But there can be a communication barrier arising due to cultural influences and English being a second language to many.
There will also be issues related to phrases, usages, style of communication etc. For example, if a team member uses the sentence structure of his/her native language while communicating in English, you may have difficulty in deciphering it.
4.3 Geopolitical conditions
The geopolitical conditions of the offshore web app development team will affect their work and could increase the completion time. So you should have a proper understanding of the situations in the country to which the development team belongs. You should have a contingency plan if there is a probability of geopolitical unrest.
4.4 Cultural and social practices
While hiring offshore web app development teams, it is difficult to overcome the cultural barrier. The culture will have an influence on the attitude and behaviours of the people and can influence the product quality.
How much does it cost to hire web app developers?
There are many factors that determine the cost of hiring web app developers. Some of them includes the following:
1. Experience and expertise
When you hire web application developers, one of the prime factors that determine the cost is experience and expertise.
A project is divided based on its complexity level such as simple, advanced, complicated etc. It is always economical to hire web app developers with different seniority levels. This helps in dividing the payments and the project according to their expertise.
2. Location
When you hire web app developers, always have a look into the geographical location.
There are web app developers from many countries such as India and Ukraine who develop quality web apps within a low budget. It is very expensive to hire web app developers from the U.S. You can hire web app developers from the US in the price range between $75-$115. If you are looking to hire web app developers from the Western European countries, they charge between $65-$80 for an hour.
Hiring web app developers from Asian countries such as India is the most suitable choice in terms of rate and quality. It is very economical when you hire a web app development company from India, as they only charge between $25-$40 per hour. The quality of web apps is also not compromised when you hire web app developers from Asian countries.
3. Billing models
There are two types of billing models which decide the cost when you hire a web app development company. They are
Fixed price model
Time and material model
3.1 Fixed price model
In the fixed-price model, the budget will be fixed before signing the contract with the web app development company you hire. You cannot modify the requirement once you sign the contract. Or a new contract or additional contract will be made if there is a change in the requirement.
This type of billing is most suitable for a short term project with a clear understanding of the requirements. You only need to pay the rate which was finalized before signing the contract. A development roadmap and date of delivery of the product will also be discussed prior to signing the contract.
3.2 Time and material model
In the time and materials model, you have to pay for the time and resources used. This type of billing guarantees a quality end product. It involves paying for the work completed. You can modify the requirements of the web app while using this model. It is suitable for developing a complex web app with more functionalities. So it is flexible compared to the fixed price model.
4. Features and functionality
The functionalities are another factor that determines the cost when you hire web app developers. Web apps with simple functions have a lower rate of development compared to a complex web app.
5. Other factors
While developing a complex web app, there is a possibility for more bugs and errors. Fixing them also increases the cost of development.
Using the latest technologies reduces time. But it increases the cost of development as money is needed to be spent on buying these technologies and training the team.
Security is users’ top priority. To enhance the security features of the app, you need to invest some money and in most cases it is unavoidable.
Having a web app for your business is better than a website. But to develop one, you need the expertise and skill set of a remarkable web app developer. You can choose to hire dedicated web app developers or a web app development company. You might need inputs from the best web app development company to build a web app that will generate more revenues for your business.
AlignMinds Technologies is an award-winning mobile app development company with a decade of success stories. We offer digital product engineering services that include strategy and design, web and mobile app development, DevOps and cybersecurity. We can help your businesses to get an edge in the competition through innovative solutions. Contact us now!
Innovations in technology have brought many changes in the lifestyle of humans.
One of the examples involves that of the internet. The internet has brought many innovations such as eCommerce, eLearning, etc. Earlier, the internet was accessed through a computer. Now, anyone can access the internet through a mobile phone.
The following survey shows the market position of various languages used in web development.
A huge market is created by websites or web applications. When used correctly it can bring good revenues to your business.
These web applications and websites are powered by many programming languages. Some of the examples include PHP, JavaScript, Python, etc. PHP is one of the most favoured programming languages of developers.
What is PHP?
PHP is the commonly used programming language in website or web app development.
PHP is an open-source language. This means that anyone can use PHP without any cost. The source code of PHP is released to the public for studying, modifying, and also for distribution.
Some of the websites that use PHP include Facebook, WordPress, Wikipedia, Yahoo, etc.
PHP is used for server-side scripting, unlike HTML which is used for designing the layout of the web page.
Difference between server-side scripting and client-side scripting
Server-side scripting
Server-side scripting is a process in the back-end of the website or web application. Server-side scripting helps in various operations of the website or web app such as customization, accessing application databases, etc.
Server-side scripting requires server interaction. The server-side scripting helps in establishing a connection between the server and the user.
Some of the most used server-side scripting languages include PHP, ASP.net, Python, etc.
Client-side scripting
Client-side scripting is a process in the front-end of web apps or websites. This scripting happens on the end user’s device. This may include all those that a user sees such as text, images, etc.
Client-side scripting does not need server interaction. It uses the web browser as a host program. Client-side scripting can minimize the load to the server
HTML, CSS, JavaScript are some of the examples of client-side scripting languages.
PHP and server-side scripting
PHP is one of the most popular server-side scripting languages.
Server-side scripting happens on the server-side and helps to connect to the databases in the webserver. HTML or HyperText Markup Language is the basic language used to create websites. Creating interactive features is not possible with HTML. But by using PHP, one can integrate interactive elements into a website.
As PHP is an open-source language, anyone with the proper knowledge can use it for bringing more innovations. There are no specified rules to use PHP and can build features according to the PHP programmers.
PHP supports a wide range of database management systems. MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Sybase, Cubrid, etc. are some of the popular examples of databases that can integrate with PHP.
Originally, the full form of PHP was Personal Home Page. Now it is changed to Hypertext Preprocessor.
Rasmus Lerdorf is a Danish-Canadian programmer. He wrote many CGI (Common Gateway Interface) programs by using the language C in 1994. This was used to maintain his personal homepage. This Personal Home Page (PHP) was later developed into Hypertext Preprocessor.
A blue elephant is the mascot of PHP. It is stylized as ‘elePHPant’ and was created by Vincent Pontier in 1998.
According to a survey, about 78.8% of websites work on PHP. This shows the popularity of PHP among developers and businesses.
Why is PHP favoured the most?
PHP is a reliable scripting language and one of the most affordable options that assist you in creating a website.
PHP works on every platform, be it Android, Windows or iOS. Most of the browsers also support PHP.
PHP provides foolproof security. PHP provides protection against viruses and threats.
Anyone with a sound knowledge of HTML can learn PHP very easily.
It is a very simple process to change your website that is based on HTML to PHP. PHP programming and HTML rendering are easier than other languages like ColdFusion, Python, etc.
Nowadays, PHP programmers use version PHP 7. PHP 7 shows improvements in performance and better memory usage. The newest version, PHP 8 is scheduled to be released on November 26, 2020.
The good thing about PHP
It is affordable for both startups and established firms to hire PHP developers. It is better to hire PHP programmers who are experienced rather than a trainee.
There is a large community of PHP programmers all around the globe who are connected. So there are always solutions to problems while using PHP.
PHP is a flexible language. The flexibility of PHP helps to integrate with application databases and develop advanced web apps.
PHP is seamlessly used in any platform without any issues.
PHP can help in creating a more SEO-friendly website than other languages like Ruby, Perl, etc.
Hiring PHP developer
If you are looking to create a perfect website, it is important to hire PHP developers.
PHP programmers are an essential part of a website or web application development team. PHP programmers help in combining your web project with other services. They also assist front-end developers in developing an ideal website or web app.
Why is a PHP developer a vital part of web development?
PHP programmers write the scripts for the back-end. The PHP programmers also make sure that the web infrastructure is working as intended. You can also hire PHP developers to modify scripts and also to test the code for errors.
How to hire PHP developers?
When you hire PHP developers for your business, make sure that they have the required experience and expertise along with good technical skills. There are three levels of seniority in the PHP programmer’s community. They are
Beginner
Mid-level
Senior-Level
1. Hiring beginner level PHP developer
A fresher who does not have prior experience in the field of PHP development is called a beginner-level PHP programmer. Good guidance and training can help a beginner-level PHP programmer to polish the skill-set. You can hire a beginner-level PHP developer to help with data manipulation and other simple tasks.
2. Hiring a mid-level PHP developer
A mid-level PHP developer is more experienced than a beginner. Mid-level PHP programmers have good knowledge in the field of work. They can smoothly work under senior-level PHP programmers with little supervision.
3. Hiring senior-level PHP developer
A senior-level PHP developer is having advanced knowledge and vast expertise in the field. Many years of experience will help a senior-level PHP programmer to quickly find solutions to problems while developing. He/she is highly skilled in every aspect of PHP.
Hire PHP web developers who have good knowledge in other languages such as MySQL, XHTML, etc. This will help in the proper integration of PHP with these frameworks that are usually used in website or web application development. Check the quality of the work by referring to the past works before you hire PHP developers.
When you opt to hire PHP web developers, always be sure that he/she is a good team player. The PHP programmer can effectively collaborate with others and ensure a proper workflow and quality of the product.
Hire PHP developers who can upgrade themselves according to the newest trend in the industry and who have all the required skill-set.
When you hire a PHP developer, you can go for any of the following options.
You can
Hire PHP development company
Hire freelance PHP developer
Hire dedicated PHP developers
Hiring PHP development company vs hiring freelance PHP developer vs hiring a dedicated PHP developer
The three choices mentioned above have their own merits and demerits. You can compare the three options and hire PHP developers that are best suited to your needs.
1. Hiring PHP development company
There are many PHP development companies that offer good quality work. Before hiring a PHP development company of your choice, you should understand its advantages and disadvantages.
1.1 Advantages of hiring a PHP development company
Experience
When you hire a PHP development company you get PHP programmers who are having years of experience in this field. There is no need for giving any training and can start the project once an agreement is made between the development company and you.
Expertise
When you hire a PHP development company, you get PHP programmers who are having excellent expertise in various fields of web development. Educational portals, eCommerce sites, news portals, NGO websites all make use of PHP to develop a better website.
Timely delivery
PHP development companies usually follow an established workflow. This makes sure that the product is delivered on time. So, hire PHP development companies with positive reviews of past clients and ensure that they can deliver the project under the specified time.
Best development practices
A good PHP development company will ensure the delivery of a quality product by following good development practices. This includes proper documentation, clean written codes, troubleshooting for errors, etc. A PHP development company also uses the newest technologies in developing your PHP program.
Certified PHP developers
PHP programmers are having a worldwide ever-growing community. Hiring PHP developers who are the best in this community is a difficult task. But when you hire a PHP development company, you get access to certified PHP programmers. The PHP development company will conduct interviews and tests to know the skill level before they hire PHP developers.
There are some disadvantages as well while hiring a PHP development company.
1.2 Disadvantages of hiring a PHP development company
If you didn’t perform a good background check before you hire a PHP development company, you might incur extra charges. Some PHP development companies can overcharge the client based on the increase in their employee salary or other office expenses.
Before the start of the project, an agreement might be made by the PHP development company and the client on the number of revisions. If the client needs more revisions in the future, he/she is bound by a contract that allows only a certain number of revisions.
The cost of hiring a PHP development company is higher than that of a freelance PHP developer. The client should pay for all the expenses while hiring a PHP development company. But when hiring a freelance PHP developer, he needs to only pay for the service.
There are some advantages and disadvantages of hiring freelance PHP developers, which are discussed in the next section.
2. Hiring a freelance PHP developer
Hiring freelance PHP developers are the best option if there are budgetary restrictions. Some of the advantages of hiring freelance PHP developers are as follows.
2.1 Advantages of hiring a freelance PHP developer
As a freelance PHP developer cost less compared to other available options, this is a good option for a startup. The startup can invest the saved money on other core objectives of the business.
A freelance PHP developer can work without any supervision or guidance. To be the best in the industry, a freelancer updates themselves with the newest technologies and practices.
Usually, a freelance PHP developer works on a global level. So the freelance PHP developer knows the different kinds of trends practiced by different businesses. A client can use this knowledge to the advantage of their business.
A freelance PHP developer may not follow a 9 to 5 work schedule. So a client can appoint time slots according to his/her choice. Therefore flexibility of communication is an advantage of hiring freelance PHP developers.
There are many search platforms available on the internet to find the best freelance PHP developers.
2.2 Disadvantages of hiring a freelance PHP developer
A freelance PHP developer who does not have any ethics would drop out from your project mid-way for more profitable work. So it is important to sign contracts between you and the freelance PHP developer.
A client has full control over the working of an employee in the in-house team. But, the client has little control over a freelance PHP developer.
There are only some freelance PHP developers who are experienced professionals in their field who give the best output. Quality of work is affected when you end up hiring a freelance PHP developer who does not show any professionalism and skill.
There are freelance PHP developers who post fake reviews and ratings of themselves. Confidentiality issues and disputes based on payments is a problem while hiring such freelance PHP developers
A freelance PHP developer might be working on multiple projects at a time. So meeting the deadlines is a problem while hiring a freelance PHP developer.
3. Hiring dedicated PHP developers
When you hire dedicated PHP developers, you can be sure that you get quality work for a reasonable price. Unlike freelance PHP developers, a dedicated PHP developer is like a member of your in-house team. You have direct control over the dedicated PHP developer. You get the following advantages when you hire dedicated PHP developers.
3.1 Advantages of hiring dedicated PHP developers
Quick completion time
When you hire dedicated PHP programmers, the project turn-around time can be significantly reduced. It is because the requirements are already understood and the dedicated PHP developer will be hired based on the required skill set to complete the project on time.
Easy management
Hiring dedicated PHP developers will help you greatly in team management. Dedicated PHP developers are flexible, which means that you can increase or decrease the size of the team according to the need. A project manager will be responsible for smooth communication between you and the dedicated PHP developers. You can hire dedicated PHP developers if you want to develop a quality product under your supervision, just like an in-house team.
Cost-effective
Cost is significantly reduced when you hire dedicated PHP developers. There are no additional costs incurred for training the employees as in an in-house development team. You also don’t need to spend any additional costs for equipment, allowances, annual bonuses, etc. These all expenses are implicitly covered in the service rate of dedicated PHP developers.
Experience and expertise
Hire dedicated PHP programmers to get a team of employees who are experienced in working on various areas of web development. Due to their level of mastery, they can come up with solutions to problems within a shorter span of time.
High level of security, reliability, flexibility, and professionalism
Hire dedicated PHP developers who are very professional in their approach. Dedicated PHP developers will mostly have the experience of working for several clients and projects at a global level. They can help you with the conceptualization of ideas that best suit your project.
Hire dedicated PHP programmers who follow proper documentation procedures and data protection protocols.
There are also some disadvantages when you hire dedicated PHP developers.
3.2 Disadvantages of hiring dedicated PHP developers
If you hire dedicated PHP programmers from another country, different time zones might cause problems in communication. If there is something important to communicate regarding the product development and if it is not possible due to network issues or one party being not available, it could increase the delivery time of the product.
Dedicated PHP developers might not always have a project manager to oversee the work as in the case of an in-house development team. You might need to also hire a dedicated project manager to oversee the work of dedicated PHP developers.
When you hire dedicated PHP developers from another country, always analyze the geopolitical situation. The development of the project would be stopped or delayed If there is any situation of geopolitical unrest such as wars or terrorist attacks.
Best place to hire PHP developers
You can hire PHP developers mainly from the
The internet
PHP communities
Referrals from your professional contacts
The internet
There are many freelance/B2B platforms that help in hiring freelance PHP developers from around the globe. Some of them include Freelancer, Truelancer, We Work Remotely, etc. If you want to hire dedicated PHP programmers, you can search in Toptal, Hired, Upwork, Clutch, etc.
If you have a LinkedIn account, you can use it to connect with PHP programmers who have the required skill-set.
PHP communities
PHP is having a large community of developers. A client can look in PHP communities to hire PHP web developers with the desired skill set. PHP communities and groups can be found in social media networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, etc., and also on internet forums. You can also attend PHP conferences where you can meet exceptional PHP developers.
Referrals from your professional contacts
You can seek help from your professional circles to find the best PHP developers. They might give you the contact details of experienced PHP developers who they might have worked with in the past.
Cost of hiring a PHP developer
There are some factors that influence the cost of hiring PHP programmers. Some of them include the following:
Experience
Geographical location
Skill-set
Complexity of project
Experience
As the experience of a PHP programmer increases, the rate of hiring also increases. For example, a junior PHP developer, on average, charges about $20 an hour. The mid-level PHP developer charges about $30 per hour and a senior PHP developer may charge $40 and above.
Geographical location
When you hire PHP programmers from developed countries such as the U.S., it could cost between $10,000-$15,000 for a one-month-long project. The annual salary of PHP programmers from the U.S is about $103,000.
Some countries such as India and Ukraine have PHP developers who could help you with your web project at a very low rate. A client may need to spend about $5000 for a project in these countries, or maybe more, depending on the size and complexity of the project. The PHP developers from Asian countries have an annual salary of about $50,000. It is less compared to the salary of the PHP programmers from the U.S.
Skillset
The required skill set will vary depending on the nature and requirements of the project. You can hire a mid-level developer for a simple project that does not need the expertise of a senior-level PHP developer.
For a more complex project, you will need to hire a senior-level developer who is equipped with the knowledge of different areas of web development, for example -back-end, front-end, SEO, technology architecture, web security, etc. So, the rate of hiring PHP developers differs according to the type of project and the skill level of the PHP developer.
Complexity of project
The rate of hiring PHP developers is influenced by the complexity of the project. For a simple project with fewer features, the cost of developing is in between $1500-$3500. A mid-level project can be completed in between $5500-$10,500. For a complex product with advanced features, it may cost $15,500 and above.
To develop a web-based solution that stands out from the competition, you need to hire PHP developers who are exceptional in their field of work. In other words, the experience, skillset, and expertise of developers are the backbones of any good web-based solution.
AlignMinds Technologies is an award-winning mobile app development company with a decade of success stories. We offer digital product engineering services that include strategy and design, web and mobile app development, DevOps, and cybersecurity. We can help your businesses to get an edge in the competition through innovative solutions. Contact us now!
If COVID has benefited any industry, it is the tech industry.
Due to quarantine and self-distancing as a measure against the pandemic, the direct interaction between consumer and business has widened. As a result, there is a surge in demand for technology innovation and adoption in the market to fill this growing gap.
Even the ones that were called “traditional” have either digitalized their business or are in the early stages of technology adoption.
However, there are businesses and entrepreneurs who are not yet able to make the transition. One of the major reasons is the budget and availability of a reliable technology supplier. For most of them, the current situation was unforeseen, and they are sceptical about the ROE they may gain through the digitalisation of their business. Or, they have a limited fund available with them.
This article is written with an aim to help such businesses and entrepreneurs.
What is mobile app development?
To understand what mobile app development is, we should first understand what mobile apps are.
A mobile app is a set of mobile programmers with specific functions that are bundled together targeting a defined population with specific needs. These programmes tried to fulfil the needs of the defined population through
Delivering services directly through the app
Helping the population to request for the services and products through the platform
Helping businesses to connect with the population
In the first and last cases, there will be a single vendor whereas in the second case there may be more than ne vendor.
Mobile apps are rapidly becoming popular since the last decade. Industries like retail, telecommunications, banking, insurance, healthcare, and government have already leveraged the power of mobile apps to enable users to conduct transactions and access information in the most convenient way.
The number of mobiles apps are increasing day by day and the usage of mobile apps have seen a rapid increase in the past years.
Number of mobile app downloads worldwide from 2016 to 2019 (Source: statista.com)
Number of apps available in leading app stores in 2020 (Source: statista.com)
These numbers are expected to increase many folds in coming years as technology is improving at a rapid pace and businesses are leveraging technology to offer a convenient medium for their customers to connect with them and get services and products from them.
Mobile app development cost
Due to the fact that customers are looking for more convenient ways to get services and products done and businesses are having a hard time with minimizing the gap between them and their targeted customer base, it has become almost a mandatory to use technology to your advantage.
However, one of the major hurdles in getting a mobile app for your business is the cost associated with the development of the app.
There are many factors that go to deciding the cost of developing a mobile app.
Factors affecting the app development cost
Geography
One of the major factors in deciding the mobile app development cost is the location of the app developer. Usually, service providers from first world countries charge a higher rate for their services. Whereas, app developers from south-east Asia and east Europe have a comparatively lower cost associated with their services.
Half of the mobile developing companies charge anything between $25 to $49 for each hour of work they do. Developers in Asia keep their hourly charges to a maximum of $100.
Features and functionalities
The function and features of the proposed mobile app is another major factor that decides the cost of the mobile app. For example, to fulfil a function, the developer may have to choose various technologies, services and components and the integration them together to make the app suitable to successfully execute the function. As the function varies, these technologies and components will also vary, and the cost associated with them.
Platform
There are mainly two types of mobile apps: Native and hybrid.
Native: Developed for a particular platform, for example, Android. These apps will work only on this particular platform.
Hybrid apps: These are cross platforms apps that works on more than one platform.
The advantage of a hybrid app is that it will on more than one platform and there is no need to develop separate apps for different mobile platforms like iOS and Android. This will help in cutting down the development cost significantly since the resources needed now will be less.
If you are focusing only on one platform, for example, Android, the cost may be different compared to developing the same app for the iOS platform. It is mainly due to the workflow, resource allocation and quality standards that vary from platform to platforms.
Time
If you want the app to be deployed as fast as possible, the cost may go up. This is mainly because more resources need to be invested in the process to deliver the product as early as possible.
Experience and expertise of the development team
Experience and expertise do not come cheap. If the app developer is an expert in the field and has years of experience under the belt, she will be charging a relatively higher price for the services. The good thing is that such developers can provide quality products, based on the requirement and the nature of the market, within a short time possible.
Design and user experience
Design and user experience plays a vital role in deciding the success of a mobile app. An app with good design and offer great user experience will win attention and popularity easily in the market. However, coming up with a good design strategy and optimizing user experience requires expertise, time, and resources. A good design strategy and user experience are the results of in-depth market research, conceptualization, testing and evaluation. Therefore, developing a disruptive product always requires a good investment.
App security
Most of the mobile apps deal with at least one set of sensitive data like user information, financial transaction, documents, user locations and user behaviours. This information may be critical in the smooth functioning of the mobile app. But, what important is ensuring such data are stored securely and there is no data theft or unauthorized access. Since the value of data is usually decided by the sensitivity of the same, we will have to put extra security measures to protect such data. Security is one of the critical features of any digital solution.
App Deployment
App deployment is all of the activities that make a software system available for use. Usually, it means, the app is ready for use and is uploaded to app marketplaces like Play Store by Google (In case of Android apps) or App store by Apple (In case of iOS apps). App deployment itself is a service and there is usually a cost associated with it.
Maintenance and update
Apps demand maintenance and regular updates. Releases of security patches in regular intervals is a critical part of maintenance. Usually, the first version of the app is released with minimum features. More features will be added as updates based on user feedback and market demand. Also, as technology advances, there will be new methodologies that need to be integrated with the app to replace the outdated ones.
Maintenance and updates plan (Post-deployment plans) varies from developers to developers. Industry, technology, future versions planned etc are some other factors that decide the cost of Maintenance and update.
App development cost and app development methods
Waterfall and Agile are the promising app development methods in the industry. In the case of waterfall method, documentation is required in advance before the process for development begins. On the other hand, if you are going to use agile methodology, there is no requirement for process documentation before the development. Using the waterfall technique, you will get a clear viewpoint on what you are getting and how much cost will it require. Agile method is the most adopted as it comes with a more flexible structure. You can adjust the products, functions, features and changes. Through the agile app, you get your app on time and start getting your target audience faster than the waterfall method.
Waterfall app development method goes right with a fixed fee structure. You can decide the fixed charges you would like to have while developing the app, however, you may have to compromise with the quality of the app.
In the case of agile methodology, you will get what you pay for. As mentioned above the method is flexible enough that you can count on the amount you invest in developing the app. The developers will provide you with estimated rates of their work and you can track the time, efforts, and resources they put into the development process.
Conclusion
Android is the most popular mobile platform today. If you want to target the maximum population but have a limited budget, go for Android apps.
The cost of developing an app depends on its functions, technology, app architecture, resources needed, planned stages, timeframe, security, and maintenance. Since App development is a dynamic process, there will be always an uncertainty associated with the cost until and unless all the requirements are finalized and there is a development plan in place. The inclusion or exclusion of even a single feature in your app will change its cost. However, never compromise on app quality due to expenditure.
If you have an idea that needs to be transformed into a mobile app, contact us now.
If you are wondering how much it will cost to turn your idea into a mobile app, contact us now and share your requirement! Our team of experts will get in touch with you soon!
Accelerated Mobile Pages is an Open Source Initiative to overcome the slow and frustrating experience of web pages and to provide fast mobile experience. Google together with other publishers and technology companies found this solution – AMP Project to bring the whole internet to your mobile really fast – be it images or videos. AMP is a fantastic approach to make the mobile web faster.
How does Accelerated Mobile Pages work?
AMP basically has three components
1. AMP HTML
These are a subset of HTML designed to create “reading” contents than interactive contents. This strips out most of the elements that make the app pages load slowly in mobile devices.
2. AMP JS
It strips down third-party JavaScript and manages resource handling and asynchronous loading.
3. AMP CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Cache and optimize AMP-enabled pages for better performance.
Pros and Cons of AMP
Pros of AMP
Instant speed
Increased performance and reliability
Increased customer visits
Excellent support for ads
Improved ranking
Cons of AMP
Rewrite your template to accommodate the restrictions (like, CSS must be inline and less than 50 KB).
A custom amp-imp element must be used for images and width and height must be included explicitly.
Custom tag amp-video must be used to embed videos via HTML 5. Amp-YouTube must be used to embed YouTube videos.
Is using Accelerated Mobile Pages good or bad?
Performance is crucial for a website to be successful. If the web pages cannot load fast, the user will simply leave your website and try somewhere else.
AMP provides the free flow of information and works faster and better for everyone and everywhere. However, it comes with the cost of removing sometimes your most desired piece of code because AMP does not allow some form elements and third-party JavaScript as they really slow down your pages.
Therefore, for the developers who are interested in exposing their website features to the fullest, rather than relying on a stripped-down version of their code, there are so many performance gauging tools available online that provide recommendations on how to improve performance. It provides you with a list of blocking JavaScript files, large-sized images, resources requesting for an HTTPS connection, the order of display of items in your web page and every other information that is required to improve your website’s performance.
Instead of using AMP to shorten your piece of code, focus on finding slow areas that affect your app performance and think of ways to fine-tune and optimize your code. You won’t end up displaying the stripped-down version of your code and can utilize the power of your website to its fullest. In other words, AMP is not of much importance for developers who aim for code optimization and for those who are not interested in integrating a third-party concept to their code.
Before we begin with the vulnerabilities in web applications, it is good to know there are several open communities like OWASP that are always looking out for vulnerabilities and are dedicated to resolving these vulnerabilities. Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is an open community dedicated to enabling organizations to develop, purchase, and maintain web applications and APIs that can be trusted.
Now let us check the top 10 vulnerabilities in web applications and how to tackle these vulnerabilities.
1. Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
It is a very common application-layer web attack. XSS targets scripts embedded in webpages that are executed on the client side (i.e., the scripts run on the user’s web browser). XSS is a threat for client-side scripting languages like HTML & JavaScript. It works by controlling the client side to work as desired by the attacker. Such an attack may, for example, use a script to run every time page reloads or on any other events.
XSS is mainly used for tampering and stealing user sensitive data. XSS usually targets the user and not the application.
We can prevent XSS by separating untrusted data from active browser content. We can also use frameworks like React JS or Ruby on Rails that automatically escape XSS by design.
2. SQL Injection
It’s an application security weakness that allows the attackers to alter the data in the database or just read confidential data such as a password. The vulnerability occurs when we enter untrusted data to the database from web forms or when it is part of a SQL query.
Web applications use SQL query to communicate with the database. SQL injections occur when the application fails to validate the data in a SQL query (from web forms) and hence, an attacker can trick the database to execute unexpected commands.
Using LIMIT and other SQL controls within queries are a way of tackling injections.
3. LDAP Injection
This is similar to SQL injection. Here also, the attacker place codes in user input fields to gain unlimited access. It may lead to information theft, browser or session hijacking, defacement of the website or even other problems.
LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) injections work by inserting harmful codes to client provided data in LDAP statements. If a web application does not properly validate the input fields, attackers can construct LDAP statements which execute with user permission. Such queries can modify or delete anything in the LDAP tree and cause disastrous results.
To handle these injections, it is advised to use safe API, that avoids interpreter entirely and provides a parameterized interface, migrates to use Object Relational Mapping Tools (ORMs).
4. Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Usually, a website sends an application a request that a user is authenticated from another website. An attacker can use this to access data and functionalities of the web application as the browser is already authenticated using the user’s credentials. Attackers may use XSS to defeat CSRF defence the application might employ. So, avoiding XSS will prevent these types of attack to some extent.
5. Insecure cryptographic storage
It occurs when sensitive data is not stored securely. Make sure all sensitive data are encrypted while storing & secured key management must be adopted.
Use a good encryption algorithm.
Make sure you do not use cryptography of your own since you can never predict whether it is secure or not. Do not ship or deploy with any default credentials, particularly for admin users.
6. Broken Authentication
Broken authentication happens when application functions related to authentication and session management are often implemented incorrectly, allowing attackers to compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or to exploit other implementation flaws to assume other users’ identities temporarily or permanently.
Practice implementing multi-factor authentication for web applications to prevent automated, credential stuffing, brute force, and stolen credential re-use attacks.
7. Sensitive Data Exposure
Many web applications and APIs do not properly protect sensitive data such as financial, healthcare, and PII (Personally Identifiable Information). Attackers may steal or modify such weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. Sensitive data may be compromised without extra protection such as encryption at rest or in transit and requires special precautions when exchanged between browser and server.
We can prevent such situations by applying controls as per classification. Classify data stored processed and transmitted by an application.
Don’t store sensitive data unnecessarily. Discard it as soon as possible or use PCI DSS compliant tokenization or even truncation. Remember, data that is not retained cannot be stolen.
8. XML External Entities (XXE)
Many older or poorly configured XML processors evaluate external entity references within XML documents. External entities can be used to disclose internal files using the file URI handler, internal file shares, internal port scanning, remote code execution, and denial of service attacks.
Points to keep in mind are, whenever possible, use less complex data formats such as JSON and avoid serialization of sensitive data.
Also, patch or upgrade all XML processors and libraries in use by web applications or on the underlying operating system. Use dependency checkers. Update SOAP to SOAP 1.2 or higher.
9. Broken Access Control
Restrictions on the privileges of authenticated users are often not properly enforced. Attackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data, access other users’ accounts, view sensitive files, modify other users’ data, change access rights, etc.
The possible solution to overcome this problem is to implement access control mechanisms once and reuse them throughout the application. Also, Minimize the use of CORS.
10. Security Misconfiguration
Security misconfiguration is the most commonly seen issue. This is commonly a result of insecure default configurations, incomplete or ad hoc configurations, open cloud storage, misconfigured HTTP headers, and verbose error messages containing sensitive information. Not only all operating systems, frameworks, libraries, and applications should be securely configured but also, they must be patched and upgraded in a timely fashion.
We can avoid this by checking none of the default accounts credentials is the same.
The aim of this article is to give a good insight into common flaws that can lead to modern data breaches and could make web applications vulnerable to various attacks.
As the saying goes “Prevention is better than cure”, proactive and defensive security steps must be adopted beforehand than making it a practice only after a security breach.
As the name suggests, Progressive Web App is a combination of features of web and app. It uses the modern capabilities of web and app making it very powerful, providing a user-friendly experience. Progressive Web Apps can be accessed via URL, are fully responsive and secure.
Native apps are rich in user experience, but they must be deployed through app stores. The Web apps – easy to access, but as it runs over the internet and if the internet is not available, these cannot be accessed. Even though there were attempts to implement offline web apps, the attempts failed to provide solutions for complex offline app scenarios. However, the setbacks of Native and Web Apps were overcome by the introduction of “Service Workers” in Progressive Web Apps that could handle every network request even when the user is offline and provide a rich user experience. Rapid growth has now taken place in browsers.
The biggest gain of Progressive Web App is that if the mobile browser does not support the features of the web app, just nothing happens!! It will ignore the features of a Web app and it will behave like a regular app and will redirect it to Play Store to download the app – elegant fallback, isn’t it?
Features of Progressive Web Apps
1. Feel like an app
App-style interactions and navigation are provided as it’s built on app shell model.
2. Responsive
Desktop, mobile, tablet – works well in all of these.
3. Easy installation
Appstore is not required anymore to download the app. You just open the app via browser, and you get the feature “Add to Home Screen” that adds an icon to the home screen of your device.
4. Offline mode
Use of Service Worker code in Progressive web apps enables the web app to be used in offline mode or over low-quality networks.
5. Push Notifications
Push capabilities in these web apps provide native-like experience to the users.
What is required for Web Apps?
For a web app to be “progressive”, the browser must implement these three things:
1. Register a Service Worker
Service Worker is a powerful API that helps developer build site to work offline or help speed up by obstructing the network requests to deliver cached responses. Service Workers are currently supported by Chrome and Firefox. Safari does not support Service Worker code though.
2. Run on HTTPS
This is mandatory for Progressive Web Apps to prevent third-party attacks.
3. Create App Manifest file
JSON file where a developer can specify attributes like name of the app, display (full screen, browser), orientation (portrait or landscape) etc. to display the app to the outside world.
Future of Progressive Web Apps
Will Progressive Web App gain popularity and be the king in this mobile age?
This is still in question since this will have a considerable impact on the app business market and even the Google Store due to its hybrid features. Another setback is if your requirement needs access to hardware capabilities of the device and if the mobile browser does not support those features, in that case, you don’t have a choice than have to build a native/hybrid app anyway.
Also, time and amount of work needed to implement progressive web apps are quite high – due to the requirement of HTTPS in the API. However, since it bridges the gap between the performance of web and apps, it can still provide a better solution that is fast and reliable in the modern technology world and meet user expectations.
This blog post will help you to understand the basic principles of writing solid code.
Key principles of writing SOLID code
Single Responsibility Principle
Open/Closed Principle
Liskov substitution principle
Interface Segregation Principle
Dependency Inversion Principle
These are general principles that you want to always have in the back of your mind as you design your software. For the obvious reason, the first five are called SOLID. As in “we write SOLID code”. They are not always cut-and-dried; they are rarely 100% achievable. But active awareness of these issues will help you to avoid common coding errors.
1. Single Responsibility Principle
“A class should have a single responsibility”.
I prefer to think of ‘responsibility’ here as ‘purpose’ or ‘job to do’, but it’s called SRP. This is basically just another statement about modularity. Find the logical units and encapsulate them in a class. Don’t take classes that do some of this and some of that. You’ll get greater re-use of the component since the component wasn’t bundled with several other responsibilities the upstream consumer doesn’t want or need;
An alternative conceptualization of the SRP: A class should have a single reason to change.
This principle refers to the impact of a change of requirements on the code. For example, a class should either talk to the database, or format output for the UI, not both. Classes that deal with the database won’t need to be updated if the UI changes, and vice versa. When requirements change, modification is kept to just those spots directly affected, and these changes don’t have unanticipated consequences elsewhere in classes that whose responsibilities have leaked over into ours.
2. Open/Closed Principle
“Software entities (classes, modules, functions, etc.) should be open for extension, but closed for modification.”
Construct your classes so that requirements changes can be managed by adding code, not by modifying existing code. Once you have written code that works, you should ideally never touch it again, because if you don’t touch it, you can’t break it. If you’re writing nice modular code, you probably have objects being used by other objects all over the place (code reuse = good). If you now break that class, you break everybody who is using it (==bad).
This is a very simple little pizza ordering app. There is a TPizza class with an addTopping method and a computeCost method in this application. In this example, we’re interested in the TPizza class itself.
private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{TPizza currPizza = new TPizza();
if (ckOlives.Checked)currPizza.addTopping(ETopping.Olives);
if (ckPepperoni.Checked)currPizza.addTopping(ETopping.Pepperoni);
if (ckMushrooms.Checked)currPizza.addTopping(ETopping.Mushrooms);
int pizzaCost = currPizza.computeCost();lblCost.Text = pizzaCost.ToString();}
Here is the button code. Again, we’re not interested in the interface code, so this is just to show how TPizza is used. So, all very straightforward. Now, let’s look at TPizza class.
enum ETopping { Olives, Pepperoni, Mushrooms
}
class TPizza{ETopping[] toppingArray;
int nToppings;
public TPizza(){toppingArray = new ETopping[10];
nToppings = 0;
}
public void addTopping(ETopping newTopping){toppingArray[nToppings] = newTopping;nToppings++;
}
So, it’s got a nice enum type and a nice array of toppings and an addTopping method and all is good.
Here is computeCost method.
public int computeCost()
{
int totalCost = 15;
for (int i = 0; i < nToppings; i++)
{
switch (toppingArray[i])
{
case ETopping.Olives:
totalCost += 1;
break;
case ETopping.Pepperoni:
totalCost += 2;
break;
case ETopping.Mushrooms:
totalCost += 2;
break;
}
}
return totalCost;
}
}
This works great. But the problem arises when I want to add cheese topping. I can’t add cheese without modifying existing code in the TPizza class. This gives me a chance to break the TPizza class. It could be worse, of course. If there are other places in the class where we have used the same approach (printing out an invoice, sending instructions to the pizza oven, drawing a picture of the pizza) their code will also have to be changed.
How would you have written that architecture so that you could incorporate the change in requirements (adding cheese topping) by adding code, rather than changing existing code? (Answer=> Use a topping class, who knows its cost and type. Or, if you’re really feeling elaborate, a base topping class and descendants). Not that this failure is also a violation of the SRP. It should not be the job of the TPizza to keep track of the cost of individual toppings.
3. Liskov Substitution Principle
Subclasses should be substitutable for their base class. All members of an inheritance hierarchy should fulfil the same behavioural contract. If they don’t then your “is-a” abstraction is probably wrong.
The LSP helps us to avoid misusing inheritance and consequently running into the problems that result when this occurs. A user of a base class should continue to function properly if any derivative of the base class is passed to it. Failure to follow the LSP almost always leads to problems with the OCP, as you wiggle around coding in special cases to your class family.
runWildLifeSimulator is what is called a ‘consumer’ function of TDuck. That is, it uses a TDuck instance. TDuck has made a contract – it will implement swim, quack and fly. Anybody who wants to be a TDuck needs to implement those, and it should make sense.
Surely, a Rubber Duck is a kind of duck. But because a Rubber Duck doesn’t fly and a TDuck does, this isn’t a good class hierarchy. Think about what you would have to do to the consumer function.
Why should a function that wants a TDuck has to know anything about THE DESCENDENTS of TDuck? What if there are other violations in the class hierarchy? A switch statement? And of course, what happens if you need to change something about these ducks.
There is a workaround for this, of course. It is? (Let TRubberDuckie override fly to { do nothing }
There are workarounds for all violations of good design. If you hit the peg with a big enough hammer, it will go into the hole. But these sorts of problems have been showed to produce rigidity and inflexibility and general goofiness in code. Try to avoid them.
4. Interface Segregation Principle
The dependency of one class to another one should depend on the smallest possible interface. Clients should not be forced to depend on methods they do not use. This one is very closely related to the SRP: don’t stuff everything into one big garbage multipurpose class. Changes to code are isolated to those classes that are logically affected.
interface Imessage
{
public bool SendSms(String message);
public bool SendEmail(String message);
}
In this case, all the classes that inherit this interface are forced to write methods for sending email and SMS. If some clients are interested only in emails, the issue arises.
The solution is,
interface Isms
{
public bool SendSms(String message);
}
interface Iemail
{
public bool SendEmail(String message);
}
interface Imessage : Isms
{
public bool SendSms(String message);
}
5. Dependency Inversion Principle
Program to the most abstract class possible. High-level modules should not depend on (concrete) low-level modules.
Consequences of ignoring these core principles
These core OOAD (Object-oriented analysis and design) principles will help you to write SOLID code. But, what are the consequences of ignoring these principles?
As a result of ignoring these principles, the system will be,
1. Rigid
Changing one part of the code causes or requires a change to many other parts of the code.
2. Fragile
Changes in one part of the code break other parts of the code.
3. Immobile
The components/parts of the code cannot be easily reused, because they are tangled.
The Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a scalable, high-speed, low-cost Web-based service designed for online backup and archiving of data and application programs.
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is simple storage for the Internet. You can configure it very simply and quickly in the AWS console. In S3, there’s no initial charges, zero set-up cost. You only pay for what you utilize. Unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, pay as you use and full control on file privacy are the most key features of S3. Amazon S3 also provides options to host static websites.
Why I find Amazon S3 great?
Most of the Websites are having Dynamic contents which are a collection of many Images, Videos and Audio, etc. These images will be either uploaded by the Users or the Admin of the website. Some websites will be having hundreds or even thousands of images depending on the Market they are focusing on. Storing the whole images inside Server will run out of the disk space and causes server issue. So, it will be good to save it directly in the Amazon S3.
How to Configure Amazon S3?
Amazon S3 is very simple to configure and use. This can be configured from the AWS console.
In S3 you can create Buckets. Buckets are very similar to Folders in our PC. It helps us to organize the files. S3 generates random URLs for each and every file uploaded to it. Each file is objects in S3. These objects can be accessed from the Web. S3 provides you with different policies and permissions to secure the contents stored in it.
Amazon Web Service (AWS) console provides you with the ability to create an IAM user. IAM user this the centralized user account provided by the AWS in order to access the AWS service remotely or through API calls, etc.
When we are using PHP code and if we wanted to access the objects from the S3, we need to use IAM user credentials to get the object from S3 bucket, if public access to the object is not allowed.
How S3 is used with a PHP web application?
As we have already mentioned that the S3 can be used for storing static contents like Pictures, Videos, Audio, etc. Let us see how it work in a real-life scenario.
Source (awsmedia.s3.amazonaws.com)
As the Image displays, when a user is trying to access a Webpage, the requests hit the Webserver. The Webserver sends a request to the Amazon S3 asking for an Image stored in it and the S3 returns the Image that is used in that particular Webpage.
How to set up Amazon S3?
Let us assume that we have a Web server running. We have a PHP site running in it with thousands of images as part of the content in it. We need to make sure there will be no storage issue due to running out of hard drive storage space.
Choose the following steps to mount S3 on an EC2 instance.
Create a new directory under that Webroot of the PHP Application where you wanted to mount the static contents.
Now you need to download and install s3fs from the source. S3fs is used to mount the S3 bucket to the system.
In-order to connect to the Amazon S3 bucket we need to authenticate. For that, we need to create a password inside the user home directory and pass the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY which we got from the AWS console.
Now, after mounting the Drive we can start using it as a local drive that is attached to the PC.
What are the PROS /CONS of using Amazon S3?
We understood Amazon S3 and its features, also how we can configure it. Now let us discuss the Advantage/Disadvantage of using S3, in the perspective of a web application.
PROS
S3 is that it can be mounted to an EC2 instance and can act as a local drive attached to a system.
S3 can be used as a Backup Volume where we can store the backups. This can save the EBS (Elastic Block Storage) space which is the main storage.
S3 can be used for many servers at the same time. Whereas EBS can only be attached to an instance at a time.
Highly Available, Redundant. Basically, data loss is not possible (99.999999999% durability, 99.9 uptime SLA).
S3 storage provides up to 5TB storage space.
CONS
S3 is an object store it is not a file system.
Hence S3 is not a file system it does not have file-system permissions.
S3 is slower than the EBS volume which is directly connected to the instance. Hence it is good to store static contents like Photos, Videos, etc.
Conclusion
Amazon S3 is the best way to Host web sites cost-effectively. Since the price of physical drives is huge, Amazon S3 will be a good option to store static content.
You might see the Ads with the top row results in the Google search. What are they, why they differ from the other results?
Those are Google ads that a company paid for so that people will notice their business whenever they’re searching Google. And, the company only have to pay whenever someone clicks on the ad. This is known as cost-per-click advertising (CPC).
How to show your Ads on Google
Go to http://tinyurl.com/pevnb3j and create your own Google ads account. Then you can create your Ads with your preferred locations, keywords, etc. For help on creating managing your Google ads account go to http://tinyurl.com/qy6kuq7
Google ads API
The Google ads API allows applications to interact directly with the Google ads platform. You can build applications to more efficiently manage large or complex Google ads accounts. If you want to use Google ads API in your applications, first you will have to create an MCC account.
What is an MCC account?
MCC (My Client Center) Account
An MCC account -manager account- is a Google ads account that lets you easily view and manage multiple Google ads accounts –including other manager accounts– from a single location.
You can create a new MCC account here – http://tinyurl.com/q9n7gsh
After downloading go to the following path? “..\utilities\OAuthTokenGenerator\bin\Debug\”. There you can see a file named ‘OauthTokenGenerator.exe’. Run the file and you will get the following screen:
Submit Client ID and Client Secret you have handy then click OK, and it will show you the Refresh Token for your account.
Find the .dll files inside – “..\examples\AdWords\CSharp\bin\Debug\”.
Please note: You can use the Developer Token only after your MCC account is verified by Google Team. This process is done by humans and it needs long time so. (sometimes it takes more than two months!)
Want to start coding right away?
MCC test Accounts comes for help.
MCC Test Account
MCC test accounts allow developers to execute AdWords API requests against the production environment for development and testing purposes. The MCC Test Account will not server the Ads on real Google search.
You must use a production (non-test) MCC account’s developer token to make AdWords API calls against a test account. You can use the production developer token against a test account even when the production developer token is pending approval.
The search module is a vital component in today’s web applications. Its importance, as well as user-friendliness, is very critical in the growth of the business.
Two most important, most discussed, and widely used Search Engines are Apache Solr and Amazon CloudSearch. Both Solr and Amazon CloudSearch are search platforms that enable you to search your data by submitting HTTP requests and receive responses in either XML or JSON.
Apache Solr is open-source software. It is written entirely in Java and uses Lucene as the “engine” but adds full enterprise search server features and capabilities. Highly specialized search solution companies like lucid works, search technologies etc may prefer creating plugins and modules using open source code which gives more flexibility and control. The current, released, stable version of Apache Solr is 3.3.
Why need search engines?
So, why we really need a search engine?
Do the direct search in the database is not enough?
This is the first question that came to my mind when I was about to integrate Solr to one of our projects. I went on with some researches based on these questions.
What the search engines actually do?
Search engines go through each and every data and find a match if exist. If for a small web application direct database search is fine. But for applications with huge data, if we do a direct database search it will be a heavy process to perform a search.
What search engines like Solr do is, they read the data from database and keep a local index with that data. Periodically or when some data update occurs, we update the index also. And, when we perform the search, the search is done in the index and matching results are fetched from the index. Since the index and the code lie on the same location, search becomes tremendously fast and easy.
First, download the latest version of the Service from the official site. Solr is written in Java so you also need Java Runtime Environment to run it.
$ cd solr-4.1.0/example/
$ java -jar start.jar
Once JRE is installed and started, Solr will be available with a web interface on port 8983. Open a web browser and go to http://localhost:8983/solr/(assuming Solr is installed in your local server). You can see something similar to the following image:
If you look at the left-hand side navigation you will find “collection1″. Collections in Solr are something similar to a database table. You can query it. Click on the collection and choose “query” from the submenu.
The first option is called “Request-Handler (qt)” with default value “/select”. Request handlers are sort of pre-defined queries. Next parameter is a query and its default value “*:*” selects everything. If you execute the query, it will select all data from the index. For now, since the index is empty, it will give zero results.
Now, we need to insert some data to the index from our database, right? First, include the Solr service.php (the config file that reads and writes data to the Solr Index). Now, fetch the current index and save it to a new array say $results_old. So $results_old->response->docs shall contain all the data in the Solr index (if there is some data, for now, no value will be there). Fetch whatever data we want to index from the database and map it to the Solr index fields. Once all data are mapped, write them to the index in a key->value pair format.
If you do a normal select query from the web interface, you will get a result similar to the following:
Now how to use Solr with your PHP project? You shall be having the PHP library called solr-php-client. It offers an object-oriented interface to Solr, somewhat like the PHP Solr extension. This library is however fully implemented in PHP so it can easily be used on any PHP environment. You may download it from : http://code.google.com/p/solr-php-client/downloads/list .
Once the library is added along with your project files, go to the file SolrPhpClient/Apache/Solr/Service.php . This is the main configuration file.
To connect your project with Solr, include the service.php file in your code. Then you will be able to access the Solr object as:
$solr = new Apache_Solr_Service(SOLRHOST, SOLRPORT, SOLRNAME);
Now, we need to write our data retrieved from the database to the Solr index. First initialize the Solr document as:
$document = new Apache_Solr_Document();
Save each of your data as a key-value pair (if multiple tables, using multidimensional array structure so that, the table names fall on the parent key-value pair.). After adding all your data to the Solr document,
These are the basic steps, to integrate Solr with your project. You have connected your project with Solr, added your data to it and performed search too.
Distinctive advantages of Solr in my experience
Solr is one of the most widely used Search Engines in the current world. Here follow the major reasons for why Solr is most opted.
Apache Solr has multilingual support. So, you can make it useful for your websites which are not necessarily in English.
Faceting is one of the important features used in eCommerce website search modules. Faceting allows you to categorize your results into sub-groups, which can be used as the basis for another search. Solr supports Faceting to a minimal level.
When you do a search, as you type you will be able to see suggestions of popular queries in relevance to the input are presented as shown in the following image like what we see in Google Search.
This feature is called Auto Suggest. This feature can be implemented at the Search Engine level or at the Search Application level. Apache Solr has the native support for the autosuggest feature. It can be facilitated in many ways using – NGramFilterFactory, EdgeNGramFilterFactory or TermsComponent. Usually, you can find this feature of Apache Solr is used in conjunction with jQuery for creating powerful auto-suggestion experience in applications.
Ecommerce sites can benefit from the “Find Similar” feature as research suggests that users typically compare products before making a transaction and are likely to buy a product which is better. Apache Solr implements the “Find Similar” feature using handlers/components like MoreLikeThisHandler orMoreLikeThisComponent.
Sometimes when we type the search term spellings go wrong, then the search engine automatically corrects the spelling and present you with even the search result. This feature of presenting the user with spelling corrected suggestions is called “Did you mean…” feature. Apache Solr implements the “Did you mean…” feature with the Spellcheck search component.
Apache Solr has many algorithms including cache implementations such as LRUCache and FastLRUCache. Solr, being open-source, it can be extended by adding your own algorithms.
Solr is a free service. All you need to do is install the Solr to your server, add the Solr-php-client library, and write some small codes to connect your project to Solr.
Market research has shown that 95% of users assess the value of your website based on its visual appearance. Websites must be creative and innovative enough to keep users attracted to your website.
When someone visits your website, their first question would be “Why must I access this site when I have other real worth websites? What is so different about this site?” and that’s where your website must stand out from the crowd dominantly, clearly and convincingly answering user’s queries and making them stay on your website.
Parallax Scrolling is one such hot design technique used in most of today’s websites providing its users close interaction with the site and making browsing more interesting. Parallax effect was more popular in 2D video games in earlier days, but with the advancement in JavaScript, one can successfully use effects of Parallax in their website to give completely unique experience.
How Parallax Scrolling works
Parallax scrolling is achieved by having the background image (or elements) move slower than the foreground image giving an impression of 3D depth. Different elements move at a different speed, creating a sense of animation and enhanced interactive user experience. Content is marked up using HTML tags, while jQuery checks how far the user has scrolled and move different elements at a different speed.
The Parallax movement started in the web using two simple layers. Thanks to advancement in JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3, now foreground and background elements can be grouped into different layers and speed of these elements can be controlled based on their layers.
Pros of Parallax Scrolling
Holding visitor interest
As a user scrolls down the page, he is taken to the next level of information without having the user to click anywhere to see the information. This feature keeps user attracted to your website, stirring their interest and wanting them to view more of the information.
Better product display
Instead of just displaying your product as a static image, Parallax scrolling can help the user explore your product in a totally new and different way. It gives 3D view presentation controlled by their own scrolling behaviour.
Bagigia is a classic website where user gets totally different experience of viewing products. 3D presentation of the product is shown with the user controlling the scrolling behaviour.
Visual narration (Storytelling) made more efficient
Storytelling is the best way to communicate a message to a human mind. A well-designed, one-page website can prove powerful storytelling equipment because scrolling through it will be like reading an interesting book that you cannot put down unless complete.
With the right amount of animation and scrolling, Parallax scrolling can effectively communicate your message about your product, their effects and the audience. Parallax provides a nice overview of your website by letting the user visualize the website through scrolling efforts.
Unique Design
Using the Parallax effect, you can design a website that is visually appealing and user-friendly and make your website more fun place and interactive thus, making it stand out from the crowd.
Cons of Parallax Scrolling
Parallax site takes longer to load
JavaScript/JQuery is used to calculate the position of every element in the page and every time there is a scroll, position of all elements needs to be re-calculated that could slow down page load.
Parallax Scrolling does not always work
Parallax effect does not always work well with mobile technology. You might need to make sure you have a separate mobile-optimized version of your website if your parallax scrolling website does not play well on mobile devices.
Too much scrolling
Too much scrolling may irritate the user that would tempt them to leave the site before viewing the main contents of your website.
Conclusion
Parallax scrolling is just sweeping the entire web community and is expanding across the web. Parallax scrolling websites are the future of tomorrow’s website design. It has become the biggest trend in the design world today and when done right and with the right amount of Parallax scrolling, it can no doubt, put your website ahead of the curve providing that extra edge over your competition.
Securing data always remains a challenge while we are witnessing the growth of technology at an amazing pace. The more secured your website, the more the chances of users accessing your website.
Whether it is an e-commerce website, social media websites or any other company website, every website existing online is prone to one or the other form of security threat. It is very important to be aware of the web application security threats and be prepared for handling it.
Organizations now use advanced technologies and heavy security testing to keep their website safe and protect customer privacy. Security testing is not just restricted to the testing team, the development team also plays an important role in ensuring security constraints.
What’s the risk?
Hackers are increasing day by day who are in continuous search of the vulnerable website. It’s essential for an individual or an organization to take steps for protection of their data by improving the web application security. Although various tools and technologies are available to handle security threats, protecting your website is possible only by continued effort.
Hacked website is a terrible thing that causes a lot of distress to both the owner and the customers. A website that is a victim of abuse will poorly reflect on your business and brand.
Enough proactive measures must be taken to ensure all preventive steps are taken for better web application security in the long run.
Sources of web application security risks
The security threat to websites web apps and mobile apps come in many forms today. While online threats are continuously evolving, following are very popular among hackers:
Malware
Malware is nothing but short computer programs that attempt to get access to a computer without user consent. It can be virus, worm or Trojan.
Virus
Virus is a program written to damage or delete your files/contents from your computer.
Worms
Worms do not cause any harm to your data but replicate it again and again. Due to its replication nature, it takes lots of memory space degrading computer performance and consuming more network bandwidth.
Trojan
A Trojan horse is a destructive program (not a virus) that looks like a genuine application. Trojan horses do not replicate, but it enters your computer, can give access to your confidential information to unwanted users.
Spoofing
Computer or a user pretends to be another, usually, one who has higher privileges to attack system to damage data or to deny access. Many of the TCP/IP protocols do not provide a mechanism to authenticate the source or destination of a message. When extra precautions are not taken by applications to verify the identity of sending or receiving host, it becomes vulnerable to spoofing attacks. Firewalls can help prevent spoofing attacks.
Spamming
Electronic spamming is sending of messages repeatedly. There are many forms of Spamming like mobile phone-messaging spam, internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social spam, search engine spam etc. E-mail is the most widely recognized Spam.
Phishing
Hacker sends emails that look legitimate to the recipient asking for confidential information. Recipient falls into such tricks and provides the login information or other important banking details thus; hacker gets access to their confidential information.
SQL Injection
SQL Injection is a Code Injection technique in which malicious SQL code is inserted into an entry field for execution. Top websites are vulnerable to Injection flaws especially, SQL Injection Flaws. By employing injections, a hacker can have your code run unintended commands or accessing unauthorized data.
How to ensure web application security?
SQL Injection
Here, the hacker makes use of web form field or URL parameter to manipulate data or to get sensitive data. For example, consider the following query to get login credentials:
ELECT * FROM Users WHERE user_id = ‘my’ and password=’test’;
Now, the hacker enters ‘OR 1 = 1; /* in Email id text field and */– in the password, the query on execution would look like:
SELECT * FROM Users WHERE user_id =’ ‘OR 1 = 1; /* and password=*/–
This will display all users in Users Table.
There are several automated scanning and detection tools available in the market to handle SQL Injection, however, the best way to avoid such attack is proper code review as complete coverage involves manual code review and manual testing along with usage of detection tools.
Cross Scripting
Cross Scripting (XSS or CSS) is one of the most common application layers hacking technique. Here, hacker attempts to insert JavaScript, VBScript, ActiveX, HTML etc code into the dynamic pages in an attempt to run malicious code.
The use of XSS might compromise private information, manipulate or steal cookies, execute malicious code to generate undesirable results, create request taking others’ identity. This is the most prevalent form of security attacks.
One way of protecting from XSS attack is to have all the code pass through some kind of filter that will omit keywords like <script> tags, JavaScript commands, CSS tags and other notorious HTML Markup (the ones that contain event handlers).
There are many libraries available to implement a filter mechanism, which one you choose will depend on your back-end technology. Ensure you always use updated filters for better security as XSS techniques keep changing and new ones keep emerging all the time.
Error Messages
Be careful about the error messages that get displayed when a user enters incorrect data. Always give generic messages. For example, when a user fails to enter the correct username/password, give a message like “Invalid username/password”. Giving exact information about what went wrong can give the hacker the clue that he has reached halfway correctly and need to focus only on the rest of the part.
Server/Browser side validation
Validation must be used at both browser and server end for better security. Simple failures like invalid phone format, numbers only, blank field etc. can be found by form validation itself; however, using stronger server-side validation can help prevent malicious code that can bring undesirable results in your website.
Password
Always practice for using stronger passwords. Your password must be a combination of special characters, numbers and upper-case letters. Passwords must be hashed while storing in database.
In case your data get stolen, damage can be minimized if the password is encrypted as decrypting them would not be possible. Plain hashing is not enough for the security of passwords. You can make encryption more secured by adding salt to your password.
Salt is a randomly generated string inserted before or at the end of the password to generate randomized hashes. As shown in below example, it makes a password hash into a completely different string every time. Salt is stored in user account database along with hash, or as part of the hash string itself. Salt must not be re-used; new random salt must be generated every time the user creates a new account or change password.
File Uploads
In today’s modern web applications, it has become necessary to provide an option for file uploading. Various social networking applications like Facebook, Twitter etc, blogs, forums, and other websites provide the option to upload files, pictures, avatar, videos and several other kinds of files. The more this feature is available on the website, the more the website is prone to malicious attacks.
Sometimes an uploaded file may contain a malicious script that can just open up the entire site. Below are mentioned some best practices if implemented while uploading a file can help you have secure file uploads:
Define a .htaccess (Hypertext Access) file – A configuration file used by Apache-based web servers that has the ability to password protect folders, deny access to unwanted users, redirect users to another page, change the way files with certain extensions are utilized etc.
Do not place .htaccess file in the folder where your uploaded images will be preserved. Save it in the parent folder.
Provide a list of acceptable extensions for a website in the .htaccess file with proper deny/allow permissions. That way only allowed files can be uploaded by any user and can also limit access to each file type.
Always store files in a different folder outside of the webroot.
Avoid overwriting of files (to prevent .htaccess overwrite attack)
Create a list of acceptable mime-types
Generate a random file name and add the previously generated extension. Use a unique file name to uniquely identify each file name.
Implement both client-side and server-side validation for extra security.
SSL
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a protocol used to provide security to websites over the Internet. If the communication channel is not secured while transmitting confidential information between website and web server or database, a hacker can easily get access to user accounts and personal information. SSL helps overcome this security threat by establishing a secured connection between browser and web server.
SSL allows confidential information like SSN, Credit Card details, login information etc to be transmitted securely over the network. SSL certificates have a key pair – public and private key. These keys work together to establish an encrypted connection.
The certificate also contains the identity of the website owner. Once the webserver has SSL Certificate installed and the communication between client and server is secured, it gives a trusted environment to the visitor indicating that their connection is secured. Browser assures visitors that their connection is secured by displaying a lock icon or a green bar and URL starts with https:// than “http:”
Conclusion
Do everything you can to improve web application security. Stay up-to-date, limit access to resources, use strong passwords and password storing techniques, and constantly monitor your site. These are some simple steps that if carefully considered can protect your data and website from hackers.
JavaScript is the popular choice for frontend developers. Web development is ever-changing and if we take the list of programming language that has kept up with the latest trends, JavaScript will rank in the first position in the list.
Why JavaScript?
JavaScript was mainly developed as a client-side scripting language to be used across multiple web browsers in various web applications. JavaScript has the inbuilt behaviour that lets developer validate each field as the user inputs data in it and provide immediate feedback for incorrect entries without needing to load another web page to process their request.
Using JavaScript, you can provide an immediate response to various actions taken by the user without the need to load new web pages to respond. This interpreted programming language also helps web pages to be more interactive using animations without involving forms. You can even load new images, objects, or scripts into the web page without reloading the entire page.
JavaScript can efficiently handle requests being passed to the server and interpret results coming from the server. Most common areas where JavaScript can be used are Form Validation, Alerts, Image rollovers, advertising pop-ups and AutoComplete feature. With the advent of Node.js framework, JavaScript has become even more powerful and is widely used for server-side and networking applications.
Origin of JS
JavaScript originally known as Mocha was developed in May 1995 by Brendan Eich, then working at Netscape. The name Mocha was chosen by Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape. In September, the name was changed to LiveScript and in December, upon receiving Trademark License from Sun and for marketing reasons, the name was changed to JavaScript.
In 1996-1997, JavaScript was handed over to ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association) to set standards that could be used by other vendors. Series of standards were applied to this language and ECMAScript 3 was introduced in 1999, which is the baseline for today’s JavaScript.
While all these events happening, in 2005, with the combined efforts by Open Source Developer Communities, JavaScript got a new touch by the introduction of a new concept called AJAX –set of technologies, using which data can be loaded in the background without the need to reload the entire page resulting in more dynamic applications. This resulted in the popularity of JavaScript and several libraries such as Prototype, jQuery, Dojo, MooTools, etc were released.
In July 2008, various browser vendors and other interested parties met to hammer out a new language based on JavaScript. Work began on a proposal called ECMA4 and ultimately got renamed to ECMA 5 and got standardized pretty quickly. As soon as ECMA5 was finalized, work began around code called Harmony. Harmony brought some basic changes to ECMAScript and closed a few of the open gaps in functionality. Main goals of Harmony included improve language for writing complex application and libraries used by those applications, keep versioning as simple as possible and adopt de facto standards (as much as possible).
Popularity of JavaScript
The different website provides a different ranking of JavaScript based on different measures like popularity, Search Index, Code hosted etc.
Tiobe Programming Community Index has rated JavaScript at 11th position based on the language’s popularity compared to other popular languages indicating only 1.37% internet searches were made for JavaScript language. Github Code Sharing site indicates that JavaScript is the most popular language accounting for 21% of JavaScript code hosted on the site. PYPL Popularity of Programming Language index has ranked JavaScript at 7th position.
JavaScript is more about client-side scripting language. JavaScript code can be written using any text editor (like TextEdit) and just a supporting browser is needed to run the code. Such simplicity of code is really useful for beginners to write their code. With the advanced framework of JavaScript called Node.js (server-side), it can now be used to develop an entire website.
Different Framework of JS/Popularity of JS
Some of the popular JS Framework are Node.js, Angular JS, Backbone.js, CanJS, Ember.js, SproutCore, Knockout.js, Spine, Meteor.js, Yahoo!Mojito, etc.
Node.js
Node.js is a cross-platform run-time environment for server-side networking applications. Node.js Framework is gaining high adoption rate as it can now be used to develop real-time applications. Big Giants like Microsoft, PayPal, Walmart, LinkedIn, SAP etc. are popularly using Node.js to create websites.
Node.js was created and published by Ryan Dahl in 2009. It was initially developed only to run on Linux, but after his presentation at JSConf EU Conference, it gained momentum, the package manager for Node.js libraries-npm was developed in 2011. In June 2011, Microsoft partnered with Joyent (where Dahl worked while creating Node.js) and released first build to support Windows in the month of July 2011.
JavaScript has no unified API for I/O providing ability to build modern I/O interface in its best way and this was considered the main factor that Ryan chose JavaScript to define series of asynchronous, event-driven I/O. The major advantage of Node.js is that it can keep alive many socket connections alive and can accept a request for new connections as well.
Node.js application runs in single-threaded environment; multi-threaded execution also supported in Node.js 0.10+ versions. Node.js applications maximize throughput and efficiency using the non-blocking I/O and asynchronous events. Node.js applications have great performance, and huge flexibility to implement both high end and low-end functionality.
Future of JavaScript
Third-party plugins that were used to develop the videos and other UI visuals using Flash are now replaced by JavaScript giving the same user experience. This programming language has made a unique position on the browser side, dominating almost everything a client computer does. With addition like Node.js, jQuery, JSON, JavaScript is conquering the server-side and the internet of things. In the world of mobile apps, JavaScript using Node.js help customers build incredible and responsive cloud-powered mobile apps.
With all the innovation and standardization applied to JavaScript, the JavaScript is prepared for a completely new cycle of evolution and for an exciting future. With the development of Node.js platform, making JavaScript to be used on the server-side, we can have web applications with two-way communications – both client and server can initiate communication and data can be exchanged between them freely.
