It is 2015, and after a short gap from coding, we are back again. We have assembled our desk to start CODING once more.

The last year was fun, as PHP gained many reputations, but being an insecure language never was one of them. The core team does not withstand all the faults and is rather pouncing on the security matters while updating PHPs latest version. This is because the end users tend to mess up. We have a number of faults within ourselves, we do not update, use outdated packages or packages that have holes in them, we at times also use pre-historic extensions and thus we expose ourselves to a number of threats in a creative manner.

Keeping away a number of glitches let us a start afresh in 2015. As per our PHP developers at UIPL and consulting with them, we have designed the most reliable resource, best practice and PHP tips to avoid those silly mistakes that made PHP developers show the dunk last year.
Let us look into the best practices of PHP development in 2015 to perk up our coding skills –

1. Use Updated Version Of PHP: While asking our PHP developers on what should be our main PHP tip for our readers the development team marked our team to focus on the use of updated version of PHP for all. People are lazy and speaking of upgrading different application makes them rile up. Most of them ask for legacy support without considering the damage they does to the ecosystem. Even we have seen that the surveys taken on installation percentages of old PHP versions across the web, comparing to the stability list to find how many servers are running PHP and that too in an insecure manner.If you are develop something and run anything else without using the latest version of PHP. Or if you clients insists on the use of the old version instead of the latest tech them about the vulnerabilities they are introducing to their project. Even warn them about the horrors that can happen if they do not act before. Updating your PHP is a task that you cannot do later, do it now and do it often.
2. Avoid the Use of Outdated Hosts: Our developers came across different discussion forum and they feel that developers must refer current PHP versions supported by various hosts. Even they also say that they can find it at phpversions.info or if you would like to contribute and add some missing values on Github. Our developers recommend steering clear the shared hosting in general. According to them today we have a number of cheap VPS providers. When people opt for VPS providers, other than saving you from sharing an environment with everyone else or being susceptible to the instability of a system as introduced by someone. Setting up your own server from scratch is rewarding. Besides, you can see that today barely anyone has the latest version of PHP as the default. Why will you work when you have access to the latest software?
3. Its Time to Adopt HTTPs: Do you know encryption is the crazy fact that you need to have while working on PHP? Just not, as a means to defend you from the snoop of authorization, but also assure that, the clients and website visitors are protected and they will not leak any personal data. Well, you will not find any workarounds to get HTTPs everywhere, one should not rely on those, and it is the responsibility of the web developers to improve the web at large. HTTPs is not directly related to PHP, but while you start a new PHP project it is generally easy to set up your server to use HTTPs before you start coding that too in the middle of the project. To get out of this is cryptic and a discouraging task.
4. Make Sure Your PHP Is Secure: You must follow the best practices when it comes to password protection, password generation, encryption, and authentication. You must read the books and must use packages like those suggested while securing PHP site.
5. You Must Stay on the Right Way: Using the PHP in the right way help to improve the project using PHP codes and you must be responsible for their use. As a plausible resource, you can find both book and digital forms called PTRW that acts as an indispensable resource to make sure that you are fit to handle the challenges of modern app development. Our developers feel that if the coding misses something or if the developers want to contribute with typo corrections or alternative resources and guides, then developers can feel free to do so with the help of Github.
6. Must Avoid the Bad Packages: Two years ago, Fabien Potencier of Symfony fame announced the creation of a list of vulnerable packages for PHP and within a couple of years; it turned into an open source public domain property. Not it allows developers’ to post their composer.lock file to their API or web interface and even the CLI tool and helps to check the project for vulnerabilities. However, it is still important as a step from the end users.

However, you know we are lazy, quite lazy people.
Well, our developers will like to share one more thing. They feel that the developers must download a security-advisories package that uses this database of known vulnerabilities. Such packages serve as a meta-package that helps to check whether the bad versions are required in your project. It would warn you and prevent the attempt the download of such packages, saving will help not only a checking the steps, but will also delete them gradually.

Developers who are working on PHP development must include such packages in their projects. You must jointly attach the common vector of insecurity. Thus, this will help the developers to move one-step closer and eradicate security holes on a larger scale.