PHP & Web Development Blogs

People that visit your website face an invisible threat each time they log on. Small businesses are especially vulnerable to digital data breaches, and that can change the way your customers feel about you. But, although you cannot stop hackers from trying, there are things you can do as a business owner to make your website a safer experience for everyone. Keep reading for tips.

Mature digitally.

You may be ahead of the times when it comes to products and services, but, chances are, your website hasn't fully kept up. It's time to learn all you can about the internet and digital security. If you are already somewhat tech savvy, a PHP Security Course from Nomad PHP can help you better understand everything from cryptography to website error messages.

Adapting to today's digital environment means transforming your website to quickly and easily identify threats via machine learning and network monitoring. And, as Upwork explains, digital maturity not only keeps your website safe, but adopting this mindset can also increase your efficiency and accuracy by reducing human errors.

Understand the threats.

It is not enough to simply keep up with your website, you also have to understand the types of threats that are out there. You're likely familiar with ransomware and phishing, but, it's also a good idea to know how a website can get hacked. Your site's content management system and vulnerabilities within your operating system are all weak points that hackers can easily identify.

Insist on security measures.

When customers log into your website, they input their credentials. Each time they do so, you can best protect their information by keeping your systems up to date. You'll also want to ensure that your site is hosted on a secure service and that you have an SSL certificate installed.

If you are not already, have your IT department or managed IT services perform regular website security checks. PhoenixNAP, an IT services provider, notes that those websites working via WordPress should also be safely outfitted with the most recent security plug-ins.

Eliminate spam.

If your website allows for comments that are not manually approved, anyone on the internet can post. This leaves it open for hackers and other unscrupulous individuals to comment with spam and malicious links that your customers may inadvertently click on. While many of these simply exist as a way for the commenter to drive traffic to another website, others are designed to draw your readers' attention, gain their trust, and access their personal information.

Prioritize passwords.

Your customers' passwords are the keys by which they open the door to your website. Unfortunately, many people do not treat them with as much care as they do the keys they use in the non-digital world.

It's true, passwords can be a pain, but you are not doing yourself or your customers any favors by allowing simple one-word passcodes to access your site. Instead, design your site to require a strong password. How-To Geek asserts that this will have a minimum of 12 characters and include a combination of upper and lower case letters, symbols, and numbers.

While you will likely rely on your IT experts to secure your website, the truth is that it is ultimately up to you to ensure this is done. So even if you are not a digital mastermind, knowing all you can about web security can help you be a better business owner. Your customers will be safer, and a secure website is just one way to strengthen your business's online presence and keep up with today's -- and tomorrow's -- technology.

For any development project to be successful, it’s important to choose the right technology and programming language. Most of the time, developers get confused about which programming language to choose.

Nowadays, PHP and Python have gained popularity among the programming languages for web development projects. However, choosing one between PHP vs Python is a difficult task. Recently, this has become a good topic for discussion.

Here, in this blog, we will compare the two popular programming languages: PHP vs Python. Let’s see which one turns out to be the best choice for web development.

What is Python?

Python is an open-source programming language developed in the year 1991 by Guido Van Rossum. It is one of the most commonly used languages due to its high level and easy-to-understand syntax.

According to the survey by Stack Overflow, Python is one of the most preferred programming languages. These Python app examples highlight its robustness and suitability for building scalable and innovative solutions across different platforms. Most of the companies and developers around the world are using Python web development.

What is PHP?

PHP or Hypertext Pre-processor, is an open-source server scripting language that is used for creating interactive and engaging web pages. This programming language comes with many features, libraries, plugins, and add-ons that increase community support and functionalities.

PHP language was developed by Rasmus Lerdorf in the year 1995. Earlier, PHP was named as Personal Home Page, which was later changed to Hypertext Pre-processor. An advantage of using PHP language is it supports all web browsers.

PHP is a practical, flexible, and fast programming language that can handle dynamic content on HTML sites, session tracking, and databases.

Features: PHP vs Python

PHP

* Open-source language, anyone can download and use it for free.
* PHP is easy to use and code than other programming languages.
* It is more efficient than other scripting languages like ASP and JSP.
* Offers access to log in by creating a summary of the recent user accesses.
* Provides database integration and supports distinct databases such as MySQL and Oracle.
* It has predefined error-reporting constants that generate warning or error messages.

Python

* Python is an easy-to-learn programming language.
* Provides an ideal structure and support for large applications.
* It can operate on different hardware platforms utilizing the same user interface.
* Python can be integrated with C, C++, and Java programming code.
* It’s easy to incorporate low-level modules in Python interpreter.
* Python offers high-level dynamic types of data and support for dynamic type checking.
* Its features support automatic garbage collection.
* It supports an interactive mode of testing and debugging.

Pros and Cons: PHP vs Python

Here, we will compare the pros and cons of PHP vs python for web development.

Pros of PHP

* Has a large ecosystem.
* Flexible and platform-independent.
* Several open-source PHP frameworks are available to use for free.
* Offers many pluggable frameworks, Open-source and object-oriented.
* Supports different database interfaces such as No SQL, PostgreSQL, and so on.
* It is supported by many operating systems and works cross-platform.
* Encourages top-notch debugging.
* Provides in-built SQL support.
* Offers support for database collection modules.
* It supports all operating systems like Windows, Linux, and UNIX.

Cons of PHP

* Delayed and wired performance.
* Not apt for content-based applications.
* Utilizes weak typing that can lead to false knowledge and data to users.
* Its core behavior can’t be changed.
* There’s no IOT alliance.
* Fewer security protocols and features.

Pros of Python

* Easy to learn and maintain.
* An open-source and uniformly unfolding language.
* Enables cross-platform code reusability.
* Object-oriented and versatile language to deploy.
* Offers WORA functionality.
* Helps in developing GUI apps.
* Has automatic garbage collection.
* It can be integrated easily with other languages, such as Java or C++.
* Provides libraries like Tenseorflow for math-intensive tasks.

Cons of Python

* Creates delays in web app testing.
* It utilizes an enormous amount of memory to help developers in easy development.
* Operates slower than other web development languages.
* Not of much use in mobile computing browsers and mobile app development.
* It has dynamic typing, which makes error detection more difficult.
* It’s too large for a simple and small app or website.
* Run time errors occurs due to duck typing.

When Should You Select PHP?

PHP is a commonly used server-side scripting language among developers. The best use cases in which you should select PHP:
* For developing blogs, websites, and web applications.
* Work effectively on the server side.
* Less investment.

When Should You Select Python?

* Python programming language has gained popularity in recent times. Below we have given some of the best cases in which you should choose Python.
* For operating in the areas of robotics and data science.
* When you want accurate and extensive data analytics.
* Developing websites using the Django framework.

Why opt for PHP?

Here, we will give you some reasons why you should opt for the PHP programming language.
* Open-source language, easy to download and use.
* Easy to learn and operates effectively on the server side.
* This scripting language can run on distinct platforms such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX.
* It’s compatible with every server, like IIS, Apaches, and so on.
* Supports a broad range of databases.

Why opt for Python?

As you know, there are many advantages and disadvantages of using Python. Here, we will tell you why you should choose Python for web development.
* Python language is easy to use and maintain.
* Python syntax is quick to understand and debug as well. Therefore, its source code is easier to maintain.
* It has a garbage collection feature and memory addresses accordingly.
* It comes with many pre-built libraries.
* Python supports GUI apps such as Django, Tkinter, WXPython, etc.
* It’s a versatile and portable language. You can run Python on different types of operating systems or platforms.
* Python comes with a database-friendly interface that can store a colossal amount of data for commercial DBMS systems.
* It has an interactive shell that helps in unit testing before deploying a product.

Comparison: PHP vs Python

Above, we have given the features and pros & cons of PHP vs Python. In this section, we will give you a comparison between PHP vs Python in accordance with different parameters.

Parameters
Python
PHP
Release
    .
    .
Learning curve
Easier
Steep
Language type
Specialized for web development
General purpose programming language
Syntax
Clear & concise
Complex
Security
High
Medium
Readability
High
Low
Database connectivity
Faster
Slower
Debugging
Fast
Slower
Performance
Lesser support
Faster
Supported Frameworks
Flask, Django, Web2Py
Laravel, Zend, Codelgniter
GitHub Stars
    . 9k
    . 5k
TIOBE Rating
    . st position
    . th position
Forks
    . 5 k
    . 9k
Major Users
Instagram, YouTube, Quora, Reddit
Facebook, Yahoo, Flickr, Tumblr


This comprehensive comparison between PHP vs Python can help you to choose the right language for web development. Now, we will compare some other elements that would give you a clear picture of both PHP vs Python.

1. Ease of Learning

Python is an easier language to learn compared to PHP. If you are a beginner, then Python is a good choice as you can learn it quickly. Python programs are shorter as well as easy to write in comparison to other languages.

PHP programming language is made for creating sophisticated web apps. It’s not a general-purpose language, and it takes time to learn it.

2. Ease of Use

Python is an open-source programming language that is versatile and portable. Python’s syntax is simple, and coding is easy to learn compared to PHP. But PHP is not just an ordinary programming language it’s used for creating dynamic web pages with HTML. This makes PHP more difficult to use than Python.

3. Community Support

Both PHP and Python provide good community support. PHP has been in the market for a long time and has a large community of developers. Therefore, you can immediately get support if you opt for PHP.

However, there are even many Python developers who constantly develop python apps. So, the community support in Python is also good. Consequently, we can’t say whether PHP or Python is better at providing community support.

4. Flexibility

Nowadays, web apps backed by Machine Learning are in high demand. Also, ML is a significant part of Python. Python provides many machine-learning libraries, such as Tensorflow, Theano, Pandas, and Scikit-learn. Additionally, these libraries are rapid, unique, & robust and work effectively with a web framework.

Nonetheless, Python programming language can be used in many other fields apart from web development. But when it comes to PHP, it’s best for web development. Therefore, we can say Python is a better choice here.

Our skilled developers delivers the most promising web development firms to make dynamic websites for your business.

5. Speed to Market

Python provides a comprehensive set of modules and third-party libraries to help developers finish the project faster. One of the popular web frameworks written in Python is Django. It utilizes the MVC pattern to allow developers to create apps fast using a significant division of concerns and reusability.

PHP also has a vast set of tools, frameworks, and libraries. Laravel is a popular PHP framework that allows the MVC pattern. Additionally, it comes with many helpful functionalities for web development, like routing, templating, authentication, and so on.

6. Web Frameworks

You get robust and well-designed web development frameworks both in PHP and Python. Most of the big businesses utilize web frameworks that PHP provides. For example, Laravel and Symfony are mature web frameworks, and a huge community supports them. So, we can say PHP makes web development easy.

Python also has many exceptional frameworks that are highly scalable, easy to use, fast and secure. It’s two most popular web frameworks are Flask and Django. If you want a shorter development period, then you can choose Django over PHP-based frameworks.

7. Library Management

Python uses Pip to handle and deal with packages. Pip ensures that Python app development is easy, rapid, and meets development needs. Python has powerful library management compared to PHP. It has a wide range of packages and tools that assist and make web app development easier. So, in terms of library management, Python clearly wins it.

8. Security

When it comes to security, most businesses prefer using Python. For instance, Django offers many pre-built security features that aid in safeguarding the apps from distinct security breaches & threats.

Apart from that, many government organizations rely on Python as their secret hacking tool. Most of the security problems are addressed by its large community support. However, PHP is less strong than Python in aspects of security.

9. Environment Management

In terms of handling environments, Python is the best programming language. It has a Virtualenv system that aids in installing different versions of the language and switching between them immediately.
PHP has no comparison with Python when it comes to handling environments. There’s an analog of PHP, VirtPHP, but it’s archived and not maintained. Therefore, most of the developers opt for Python.

10. Debugging

Python has an in-built debugger called Python Debugger or PDB. It utilizes many debugging strategies. PDB enables dynamic typing and lets developers work effortlessly without stating things at the start of a program.
PHP also comes with an XDebug package for handling bugs and error-checking the codes. But PHP development is quite slow in identifying and removing bugs. Therefore, it often experiences security issues.

The Bottom Line PHP vs Python: Which One You Choose for Web Development?

From the blog, you must have inferred that both PHP and Python are good for web development. However, there are many aspects in which Python wins over PHP. But this doesn’t mean that you only have to opt for Python. The selection of programming language majorly depends on the complexity and needs of the project.

Sphinx Solutions is a leading and trusted web app development company. Our team of web developers can help you create the best web apps for your business based on your specifications. Schedule a call with our experts to get an estimation for your web app development project, or email us at [email protected].

PHP vs Python: FAQs

1. Why choose Python over PHP?
Python is chosen over PHP for web app development due to many reasons, such as ease to use, simple syntax, flexibility, security, high performance, etc.
2. Which programming language is secure: PHP vs Python?
Python is a preferred programming language when it comes to security as it has many security features compared to PHP.
3. Why is Python used mostly?
Python is a general-purpose programming language and is utilized in web development, mobile app development, AI, ML, game development, big data, and so on.
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In today's digital age, where data breaches and cyber attacks are increasingly prevalent, safeguarding sensitive information is paramount. Cryptography, the art of secure communication, plays a crucial role in ensuring data confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. Implementing cryptography in PHP, one of the most widely used server-side scripting languages, offers a robust means to protect your data. In this guide, we'll explore how to utilize cryptography effectively in PHP to enhance the security of your applications.

Understanding Cryptography Basics

Before diving into PHP implementations, it's essential to grasp the fundamental concepts of cryptography. At its core, cryptography involves techniques for encrypting plaintext data into ciphertext to conceal its meaning from unauthorized parties. Key aspects of cryptography include:
   
. Encryption: The process of converting plaintext data into ciphertext using an algorithm and a secret key. This ciphertext can only be decrypted back to its original form using the appropriate decryption key.
   
. Decryption: The reverse process of encryption, where ciphertext is transformed back into plaintext using the decryption algorithm and the correct key.
   
. Symmetric Encryption: A type of encryption where the same key is used for both encryption and decryption. Examples include AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) and DES (Data Encryption Standard).
   
. Asymmetric Encryption: Also known as public-key cryptography, it involves a pair of keys: a public key for encryption and a private key for decryption. RSA and ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography) are common asymmetric encryption algorithms.

Implementing Cryptography in PHP

PHP provides robust cryptographic functions through its OpenSSL and Mcrypt extensions, allowing developers to implement various encryption techniques easily. Here's a step-by-step guide on how to perform common cryptographic operations in PHP:

1. Symmetric Encryption

<?php
$encryptionKey = openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(32);

$plaintext = "Sensitive data to encrypt";
$ciphertext = openssl_encrypt($plaintext, 'aes-256-cbc', $encryptionKey, 0, $iv);

$decryptedText = openssl_decrypt($ciphertext, 'aes-256-cbc', $encryptionKey, 0, $iv);

echo $decryptedText;
?>

2. Asymmetric Encryption

<?php
$config = array(
 "digest_alg" => "sha512",
 "private_key_bits" => 4096,
 "private_key_type" => OPENSSL_KEYTYPE_RSA,
);
$keyPair = openssl_pkey_new($config);

openssl_pkey_export($keyPair, $privateKey);
$publicKey = openssl_pkey_get_details($keyPair)["key"];

$plaintext = "Confidential message";
openssl_public_encrypt($plaintext, $encrypted, $publicKey);

openssl_private_decrypt($encrypted, $decrypted, $privateKey);

echo $decrypted;
?>

Best Practices for Cryptography in PHP

While implementing cryptography in PHP, it's essential to adhere to best practices to ensure maximum security:
   
. Use Strong Algorithms: Always use widely recognized cryptographic algorithms like AES for symmetric encryption and RSA for asymmetric encryption.
   
. Key Management: Safeguard encryption keys carefully. Utilize secure key management practices, such as storing keys in secure vaults and rotating them regularly.
   
. Data Integrity: Implement mechanisms to verify data integrity, such as HMAC (Hash-based Message Authentication Code), to detect tampering attempts.
   
. Secure Communication: When transmitting encrypted data over networks, use secure protocols like HTTPS to prevent eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks.
   
. Stay Updated: Keep PHP and cryptographic libraries up to date to patch any security vulnerabilities and ensure compatibility with the latest cryptographic standards.

By following these guidelines and leveraging the cryptographic capabilities of PHP, developers can strengthen the security posture of their applications and protect sensitive data from unauthorized access. Remember, effective cryptography is not just about encryption but also encompasses key management, integrity verification, and secure communication practices. With diligence and proper implementation, PHP can be a powerful tool for building secure and resilient systems in today's digital landscape.