Top 8 Factors To Consider When Hiring A Freelance Web Developer

Like we judge people by looks, people judge businesses by their websites. Website is the face of an organization. The success or failure of a business depends upon its website. In order to make a good looking website with perfect usability and performance, you must hire a perfect team of professionals. An expert web developer can serve his clients to deliver the desired output.
Instead of hiring web development companies, it is a good idea to hire a freelance web developer. Taking your business online has become more of a necessity, rather than a trend. With the increasing demand of web and mobile development, the demand for freelance web developers has also increased, as a result of which a lot of developers have started freelancing. However, you must not get confused when it comes to selecting the best one.
A list of a few not-to-miss points will help you choose the perfect freelance web developer. So, let us bring these important not-to-forget factors into the lime light:
1. Portfolio: It is always a good idea to ask the developer to show you his portfolio. As it contains some of his best work, you will get an idea as to what type of projects he has done till date. If they are similar to what you want, you can take your meeting forward.
2. Availability: If you like the portfolio, you must ask about his availability at the time when you want him to carry out your project. Only after he is available, you can discuss it out further.
3. Experience: It is a wise idea to hire an experienced professional, rather than the one who is new to the web development. So, make sure he has got at least a few years of experience.
4. Expertise: Ask him about the services he provides, he might also be a Magento, Drupal as well as WordPress developer, so he can provide services to clients asking for any of these too. However, make sure that he is an expert in the field you are looking at. For example, if you want to build a website in WordPress, make sure you hire a freelance WordPress developer.
5. Tools and Technology: It is always a good idea to check if he uses quality tools and latest technologies for your project.
6. Price: Ask him what he will charge you for the project and also ask about the mode of payment and other payment details.
7. Time frame: Make sure, you discuss with him about the time for completion of the project.
8. Post development services: Ask if he provides support services, after the project gets completed.
Now that you are aware of some of the most important points to be taken into the consideration when choosing the right freelance web developer, it is advisable for you to make sure that you keep these points in mind so as to make the right choice and give a kick start to your business. Good luck for the same!

I'm James, a professional freelance web developer in Bristol, UK specializing in WordPress, Magento, ecommerce web development and more.

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5 Terms You Need to Know Before Making Your Website

1. Site map
One of the first things that a website developer would be asking from you is a site map. A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be a simple document or a complex Web page. The use of the site map is to give the website developer an idea of the contents of the website, where the links go, and so on. For the simplest site map, all you can do is draw a web graph of the pages and where they are supposed to go.
2. Web domain and web hosting
A lot of people think that buying a 'name' is the same as web hosting. Buying the name is buying the 'web domain.' Sometimes a great web domain is a key to a successful website. This is why they are pricey. On the other hand, web hosting is the service that web hosts give to 'host' your site. Some of the things that you need to consider are how much data they are willing to host, what type of data they are willing to host, for how long, and so on. Web hosting is also crucial because they will be done who will carry your data. Be careful of these two things, because they choosing the best web domain and a web host would be important once your website becomes big.
3. Search engine optimization or SEO
Websites are not just collections of words. They are located within the World Wide Web, and your exposure to the Web is dictated by your relevance to certain keywords and algorithms (look below for 'keywords'). Search engine optimization is the practice of making your website more relevant to search engines. You have to choose the words you use to make your website more visible. SEO is a complicated and strategic thing, and sometimes a web developer would ask for compensation to 'optimize' your website for SEO.
4. Keywords
Your website developer would most likely ask your for 'keywords'. Keywords are the words and group of words that you think will lead users to your website. If your website offers catering services, you have to use 'catering' as a keyword. Of course, there are millions of people around the world who use the word catering. Your task is to make your keywords much more specific. If you wanted to catch a niche market in your locality, you might use the keyword '[your city's name] + catering'. The best keywords are direct, strategic, and short.
5. Static and dynamic websites
These are two of the most basic types of websites. A website is either static or dynamic. Your web developer would most likely ask you whether your website is static or dynamic. Static websites do not change, hence the name. They demand minimal supervision and management. Dynamic websites are the opposite. They are characterized by a lot of changes and traffic. Determine what type of website you wanted to create and tell this to your developer.

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Website Development Explained

Website development is a term that refers to developing and creating an original website for the internet. People often confuse this term with web designing, which only refers to creating the visual layout of the website. Web designers are often the ones who create the graphics, illustrations and general interface that people see when they arrive at a particular website. On the other hand, web developers are the backbone of the website creation process. They are the ones who handle all the complex coding of the website's applications and database systems. Without developers, a website would just be a bunch of graphics and text with no functionality behind them whatsoever. Nothing would be clickable or functional, which means the website would basically serve no purpose. Therefore, website development is the first essential step in getting a website created.
Many web development companies specialize in both website development and design. Their teams often consist of top-notch programmers who have studied all of the most popular web programming languages and platforms being used today. Some of these include HTML5, PHP, Java, Flash, MySQL, PERL, Apache, Linux, and WordPress. When you hire them to create a website for you, just provide a basic idea of what you want your website to contain. Describe what the purpose of your website is and what you are trying to achieve with it. Remember there are all kinds of websites. There are websites with eCommerce stores, flash games, blogs, forums, social networking services and more. Once you tell them what you want, the programmers will put their heads together to figure out which languages will work best for your website's particular needs.
Make sure you choose a company that develops 100% original websites. Never choose one that uses templates or premade applications for their clients' websites. Web programmers should always manually create everything from scratch in order to ensure that their clients get a website that is entirely unique to the internet. This will help create a brand image for your company and help it rank higher in the search engines as well. This is something a lot of other website developers won't do for their clients. Of course, the rates to hire a web programmer and developer will be substantially higher if they are creating the website from scratch. But if you want quality, you have to pay for it. There is just no way around that.

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The Reverse Brain Drain And The Web Industry

The world, especially the technology industry has changed a lot since the colonization days. It was a journey that started with the Civil War in North America and ceased with the freedom struggles of many nations that were former colonies of England, Netherlands, France and Portugal - the erstwhile maritime superpowers of Europe.
Globalization and market forces have shaped the IT industry like many other sectors, and many of the so called 'first world' nations have become highly dependent on the highly skilled IT workforces of the 'third world' countries. The once snob attitude diminished highly when technology companies from the developed countries realized that in order to stay competitive, it is imperative that they cut down the cost associated with workforce. For them, the only feasible way to achieve their goals is to resort to cheap but skilled 'knowledge workers' from those countries which were once their colonies.
With the passage of time, IT companies from the less developed companies began providing world-class service at extremely low costs and companies from developed nations were prudent enough to exploit these opportunities. They outsourced the low and mid-level IT jobs to these service providers and in turn, the service providers churned out number games that were unthinkable in the Europe and America, given the salaries that native workers in these continents demanded.
On the other hand, skilled workers from the third world countries started immigrating to the first world countries for short-term, mid-term and long-term assignments. Some stayed back there and got permanent citizenship status. For them, the gain was huge in terms of living standards and salaries. But they had to pay a price - they were perceived as aliens in those foreign lands by the locals, who feared that outsourcing will eat up their jobs and thus possessed an anti-immigrant attitude. In spite of corporate policies and political liaison, this sort of mentality is still highly prevalent, although not acknowledged publicly by either party to maintain the status quo.
However, an inevitable change started gathering momentum when economic forces and political landscapes changed and the scale started shifting towards the third world countries. These countries realized the benefits of embracing globalization and gave up on their regulation agenda. As a result, foreign capital started flowing in the form of joined ventures, subsidiary companies and foreign direct investment, resulting in an unprecedented level of job creation in these countries.
Most of these jobs were white collar jobs with high salaries and this trend started attracting local talents, who were earlier allured by the golden promises of foreign shores. They started taking pride in working within a global environment and at the same time contribute towards the growth of their own countries. Also, many of the immigrants started longing to return to their country of origin to capitalize on the tidal wave and bubbling energy.
The result was that the third world countries that were once neglected by their own tech talents started flourishing in terms of a highly evolved business environment that is conducive to entrepreneurship. Many of their own people gave up their foreign citizenships and permanent work permits to come down to their home land and form a start-up. Although not acknowledged publicly, many high level talents are often poached by job hunters and lured to executive positions of hot start-ups with million dollar salaries.
This reverse brain-drain, as attributed by many social researchers, is inspiring local talents to take the risk of entrepreneurship. In the IT sector, this is resulting in numerous small companies being formed every single day. With the wealth of experience that they have gathered while staying and working in the advanced nations, these risk-takers are forging their way to success and glory.
More often than not, such enterprises start as a small web design company offering customized designs of websites in niche segments but at low prices. Low cost web development is also the flavor of the season, as people in advanced nation have recognized the fact that having a website for their businesses or even personal reasons is a big plus in a highly competitive environment. Overall, it is a very good sign that the equation is changing for the better, as competition will surely propel highly innovative business models and add unique values to the IT industry.

The author, Jeo Nash, owns a web design company that also offers low cost web development for global clients. As a partner of a premier IT firm called GOIGI, XYZ has vast experience of the IT industry and has worked in 29 different countries.

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Web Development Tips That Will Increase Your Sales

What most merchants fail to realize is that the design of online storefronts can highly affect sales. Minor design elements play a huge role in increasing the conversion rates and for this reason nothing should be left to chance when developing a business website. The secret to having the best website is designing it from the perspective of a shopper. Put yourself in the shoes of your shoppers and choose features that offer them better experiences on your site. For instance, you should avoid animations on the site if at all they will slow down the browsers or use color schemes that end up sending wrong messages to your shoppers.
When you hire web development services from reputable developers and designers, you can be sure that nothing will be left to chance by the time your web is up and running. However, it is also important that you take part in the development and bring in a few ideas that can help get the best setup in the end. A few tips can prove worthy in the development process of what you are looking for is to increase your sales using the website.
1. Make your shopping cart as visible as possible
Customers want to be sure of what they are doing on the site making it very important that you ensure they can see added items registered on their shopping carts. Create an area where the number of items in the cart can be seen as well as any other information necessary on the same. The checkout data should also be visible so that your customers have a swift transition shopping and checking out. You can use contrasting colors for the shopping cart to ensure that it stands out on the page.
2. Optimize buttons for adding items to the cart
When you have given a list of items you are offering your customers, ensure that you add an 'add to cart' button on every one of the products. This kind of call to action is more appealing compared to if you added a button that gives them more details on the products they are looking at. The direct action to add the products to their carts pull positive responses from the shoppers and you have increased conversion rates at the end of the day. Use colors that make the call to action visible without necessarily appearing aggressive to the eyes.
3. Clean product pages
Organizing product pages is something you can never forget when developing your website. Customers want to have a pleasant shopping experience and this is something that will only be possible if your pages are well organized giving them an easy time looking at what you have and making decisions on what they need. Too many elements can leave the pages looking too complex, whereas too few elements leave the pages looking inadequate. The secret is to strike a balance by including high quality product images, names, a quick description of the product and the price. You can add links like customer reviews near but at the bottom of the page.

Web design companies in Lebanon are very professional and can easily bring out the best from your website. Choose Lebanese web designs bound to give your customers the best kind of shopping experience on your website.

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Things to Take Care Of While Designing a Multilingual Website

Thanks to the latest technological advancements, that has created a wide range of smartphone devices and tablets bringing the world closer to each other. Today, the people of the US can very easily get in touch with someone in Asia and this easy communication has greatly influenced business owners of various countries. In fact the geological limitations have reduced, making your site widely accessible to customers in various countries. This helps to build the brand and increase revenues considerably.
It makes sense to create a multilingual website when your potential customers speak and understand different languages. But there are many things that you have to keep in mind while planning for multilingual web development. The look and feel of a site should always be taken into account as it is the cornerstone of a successful business campaign. The site must be properly localized before launch.
Let's take a look at some of the points in this piece of writing.
Consider the Text: A reputed multilingual development agency will always be more inclined to the front end designing aspects of the site. The letters and characters are displayed by a number designated to each other. Earlier, there were various encoding systems covering different languages, but today Unicode is used as it can be used for over 90 scripts. Most web designing apps like Dreamweaver, Microsoft Front Page facilitates the creation of Unicode web pages.
Web content: No one will visit your site simply for the attractive design. Visitors want to know more about your products and services; they want to read testimonials and reviews about the company to check the reliability. And overall, content is the mantra of online marketing and offering useful and relevant content for your domestic and international visitors are the best means to target a wider market base.
Domain name: It is always cheaper to have a single domain for all your targeted locations, but considering it from the SEO point of view, it is always best to have a dedicated top level domain allotted for each targeted country. The website domain is important to search engines, so if you support multilingual website design, then it is always better to create a different sub-domain for each specific language.
Website optimization: A multilingual website development company should always optimize the site for international markets instead of simply translating the key phrases directly from the English website. Local people may use certain abbreviations, synonyms or acronyms to find information for products locally. It is important to use such terms in the content to target specific markets and to increase the visibility of the site.
Site navigation: This is another crucial aspect of the web design process. Proper navigation will always help the visitors to find their way while browsing through your site. A vertical menu bar on the left of your web page is suitable for your English website, but it is better to shift this to the right for languages that read right to left.

Here I am sharing points which you need to remember when designing multilingual website.

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Why One Should Opt for PHP Website Development?

The majority of the top companies offering website development services offer PHP or hypertext preprocessor website development services.
PHP is a programming language used for creating dynamic websites. Recently obtained statistics suggest that over 20 million active sites are using PHP. That's not all; its use is observed in over a million web servers.
There are several reasons why the majority of the people and companies looking for web development service are opting for PHP website development. This programming language makes the process of custom web development easier. In addition, the language can be obtained from several open source development systems such as WordPress, OS Commerce, Joomla, Zen Cart, etc. Developers can use it to create a range of dynamic web solutions including shopping carts, web calendars, content management systems, and so on.
PHP is known for its ability to optimize memory. As a result, it never allows server overloading. Instead, it helps in improving a server's processing speed significantly.
Another prominent advantage of using this language is that it can be embedded into HTML without any difficulty. Integrating the language with advanced visual applications such as Ajax and Flash also involves some very simple steps.
One feature that, according to experts, plays a big role in making PHP one of the most widely used programming languages is its ability to support several databases including MySQL, Informix, Oracle etc.
When you are using this language for developing website, you will not need to use innumerable codes. The language is capable for minimizing code usage and comes with its own memory development feature. Gathering object codes from outside is not common as far as PHP based web applications are concerned.
PHP web development is popular among businesses of all sizes. This is because the language enables creation of dynamic websites quickly and without putting in too much effort. In addition, businesses prefer PHP as it is compatible with each of the operating systems in use right now. If required, developers can also use it for creating command-line tools and GUI applications.
A website developed using PHP would definitely possess a secure interface. Using an application developed using this language is extremely easy. Users would rarely need an external plug-in for running such applications. The entire process can be ably executed just by the server.
PHP programming enables creation of highly user-friendly and search engine optimized websites. The written scripts of the language assist users in keeping track of the activities of users.

The author of this write-up runs a web development firm. His company is represented by a team of highly qualified and competent PHP web development experts.

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The 10 Outstanding Free PHP Frameworks OF 2015

PHP is a server side scripting language, created and designed for web development. PHP is installed on millions of web servers and websites owing to its easy learning curve, interactive features, HTML and database integration support.
PHP makes the development fast, more productive and protects low level error, attacks like SQL injection, XSS attacks and others.
A few of the best free PHP frameworks of 2015, are summarized below.
1. Laravel: The framework is apt for creating modern webs and APIs. It is easy to write, maintain and extend the code. The salient features are good routing, migrations support, easy authentication, blade templating engine, and, etc. Though it is a newly released one, it has attracted most of the developers' attention.
2. Symfony: It is a powerful, flexible and scalable PHP frameworks for MVC application. It creates web application and maintains pace bypassing repetitive coding. There are abundant reusable PHP components or as a full framework such as security, translation, validator, templating, form config, and, etc. It is suitable for creating highly scalable enterprise grade applications.
3. CodeIgniter: It focuses to make extends in a much speedier manner, despite the fact that the designer begins a venture from the scratch, that is composing codes by giving a rich arrangement of libraries for normal assignments, with an essential interface and sensible structure to utilize these libraries. CI gives the freedom to inventively focus on the errand by minimizing the code needed for a given venture.
4. Cake PHP: It is a web application framework that follows MVC architecture. It helps to build prototype rapidly, no need for configuration, easily adapted for commercial applications, built-in access, clean MVC conventions, security, and etc.
5. Zend Framework: It is a commercial PHP framework that features the Zend studio, a complete IDE and a Zend server that makes the developers work quick and efficient.
One can avail support through online training and certification programmes.
6. Phalcon: It is written with C/C++ for performance optimization. It comes with fastest time request but low memory usage. It is suitable for high traffic websites and apps.
7. Slim: It is a lightweight micro-framework for PHP, with less learning curve. It is built with routing system and focuses on RESTful API with GET, PUT, POST, DELETE supports.
8. Yii: It is powerful with number of plugins, which can be added in minutes. The widgets, photo albums, payment gateways, are customised with plugins easily. It is suitable for high traffic sites owing to its high-performance.
9. Fat Free Framework: It is the perfect toolkit recommendable for the beginners.
The framework is small and the apps perform fast. It has a user guide that is followed by starters in a more convenient way.
10. Kohana Framework: It is basically based on CodeIgniter, and recommended for the sites with high volume of traffic. It has a clear documentation and an active community.
Though PHP was a language to create simple home pages earlier, has developed continuously powering most of the web with available frameworks.

The author is a techno-freak, rendering services to a well-renowned Zend Development Company in India and loves to investigate on the much talked about frameworks built on PHP programming language, which supports most of the web development.

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A Non-Technical Introduction To PHP For Budding Web Developers

As the title of the article suggests, the main goal of this article is to make 'want to be' web developers aware of the immense potential and beauty of PHP - the most widely used language for website development. By using PHP, you can create beautiful, well-structured and manageable websites that can interact with its users and are therefore dynamic in nature. The ability to change content of the website, which is primary requirement for almost all websites that are created nowadays, is also a kid's play for a PHP powered website.
I hope you are aware of the fact that PHP is an acronym for Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter and was originally abbreviated as PHP/FI, because its founder Rasmus Lerdorf wrote it to maintain his personal homepage in the year 1994. After a lot of modifications, PHP has emerged as a highly potent server side scripting language and is powered by a Zend Engine. The latest alpha version of the language is PHP 7 and if you are an advanced geek, then it's possible that you have already downloaded it for giving it a try.
As mentioned earlier, PHP can also be used as a general purpose program language, although it is most popularly used to develop web applications. The reason behind the language's high popularity among the web developers' community is mainly because it can be seamlessly integrated and embedded with HTML - the primary requirement of the web. Although a standalone PHP script can also execute itself for giving the same result, embedding it in HTML is a standard practice for making the source code more readable.
Moreover, the ability of the language to interact with databases, a common feature in dynamic websites, also makes PHP the darling of web developers. Not only that, the response cycle that goes on between a web server and a client machine is quite different for 'only HTML' websites and 'PHP plus HTML' websites. For websites that contains some PHP codes, the response is re-routed by a very powerful Zend Engine that resides on the web server.
A striking advantage of PHP is that it is a server-side scripting language, which implies that it consumes the resources of the web server for its execution. On the other hand, languages like JavaScript are client-side languages and consume the resources of the client's machine or the local host, as it is commonly called in the technical parlance. Therefore, by using PHP, one can make use of the hardware of the server and the kernel of the operating system running on it. It also adds to the security of the websites, thus making it difficult for hackers to break into the web pages and databases of a website.
Since web servers or as a matter of fact, any server in this world generally contains more powerful hardware and more robust, stable operating system kernels managed by skilled professionals, the quality of the result produced by an executable PHP code can literally create magic. For example, let us discuss a simple case where we want to put a condition within the source code that will display 'Good Morning' at the home page of the website if the server time is less than 12 o'clock in the noon and 'Welcome', if the time has exceeded the limit.
Now, with simple HTML, the time of the server can never be accessed and the visitor of the website will see a pale 'Welcome' any time he visits it. Complex conditions like setting an appropriate welcome message by accessing the time, date and geo-location of the visitor can also be framed quite easily using PHP, thus making it responsive and fun for the visitors.
No wonder, any website development company worth its salt will have a brilliant team of experienced PHP programmers. In fact, PHP has emerged as the key skill that a web development company seeks while recruiting programmers. Therefore, if you want to be a good website developer, you better start learning PHP before it gets late. Rest assured, you will be rewarded handsomely if you can develop skills in PHP and server-side scripting.

As the Project Manager of GOIGI, a premier website development company in Durgapur, Sanjib Roy has world-class expertise on PHP and other facets of large and complex website development and eCommerce development projects. The article is like a water droplet in the ocean of skills that developers at GOIGI possess.

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How Sitefinity Can Help Marketers to Increase Customer Loyalty

Your website is the face of your business and the popularity of it depends on various factors like the overall design and layout, the placement of call to actions, the color of the page and many more. But the most important thing is that, your site also needs awesome content to keep the visitors well informed about the products and services that you offer. You will agree that a website is useful to keep the audience engaged, but there are other marketing strategies that are more effective to offer a personalized experience to the visitors and most marketers agree that personal content are great options to target specific audiences.
Here in this article, we will discuss how Sitefinity development services can help marketers to offer an engaging customer experience, yet liberate them from IT. Sitefinity is a popular CMS that provides great out of the box functionalities that helps to develop flexible and unique applications for the clients.
Personalization of messages: If you are willing to create a message that is more effective to specific audiences by tailoring it, then Sitefinity developers can help create a site where managers can easily define roles based on audience types and produce messages to target each and every visitor. These personalizations of messages prove to be extremely rich in specific content that helps to start a personal or relevant conversation.
The Optimizely Widget: Now you no more have to wait to know whether your latest web page designs are working wonders for your business or not. This widget can be integrated easily to run the A/B testing. You only need to pass a code to the web pages that you are willing to test and Optimizely will generate reports that can help you to decide which page works best for you. Since each section of your page has a particular purpose like provide information, urge visitors to download an item, share a page or make a purchase, you can now clearly understand how successful each section is and where to make improvements.
Website optimized for any device: By hiring dedicated Sitefinity developers, business owners can create websites that can leverage all mobile options available. The platform does not restrict your mobile strategy and offers a flexible platform to empower your business agility. From responsive designs to mobile apps or dedicated mobile friendly websites, Sitefinity helps you to select the best approach for your business growth.
Engage with social media: By this time you must be aware of the effect of social media on your business. Sitefinity development companies offers various social media tools that can help you to broadcast a message at the same time to multiple channels. It has features that include blogs, news, events, comments, email campaigns and all these content can be syndicated or even published directly to Facebook or Twitter accounts.
Google Analytics: Sitefinity CMS can help your website to measure the performance of your site by using Google analytics. It helps to track the codes of the web pages to check and analyze the site activities and offers a detailed visual report.

Here I am talking about the importance of Sitefinity development for marketers.

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