Running Ecommerce Big Data On PHP

At DrupalCon the speed and ease of the latest PHP was a hot topic. Data science, competitive intelligence and PHP go hand in hand at E Revolution Ventures. Rule-based logic is used to track and analyze millions of products in dozens of categories. Employing cloud-based architecture has led to the development of sophisticated proprietary software. Just recently, this type of data analysis would have been amazingly costly but it’s now an option for a much wider audience. E Revolution’s sales growth was 626 percent between 2010 and 2012.

Business logic that makes E Revolution a winner is their focus on buying and selling decisions. Winning questions are: 1) What products do we sell? 2) What products and how many should be available in the warehouse? 3) How should our products be priced? 4) How much should we pay for those products? They get their answers by running PHP against their big data repositories. Factors that make PHP a great choice are its scalability, performance and reduction in memory use.

Today’s PHP is not your grandmother’s PHP. Migration from PHP 5.3 to 5.4 created a fivefold performance improvement with processing using just 50 percent of the older version’s memory use. With PHP it’s easy to start up a new product and to expand. You also get the ability to implement almost anything you can imagine.

Choosing a Suitable Host for Ecommerce Startups — Qualities and Characteristics

Businesses of any size must create a website that gives the right impression of their company. If you want your business to shine, a solid ecommerce tool, a well-designed interface, and a reliable site that users can access 24/7 are necessary. Choosing the best webhost is a function of how much you pay. Free plans offer limited space and transferring to a host with more services can be time consuming. Finding the right web host is easy when you identify the features to look for. Here are some of the essential basics.

• Support dynamic content with the most current PHP version. Dynamic content using PHP, CGI, etc. is a common implementation. PEAR extends PHP, and is used by many PHP scripts. Your host should make the most popular PEAR scripts available.
• Your site’s server logs should be accessible
• Support for .htaccess files should be provided
• MySQL or an alternative RDBMS should must be available
• SSH shell access is a common requirement
• HTTPS support must be provided
• Email hosting with IMAP is a basic requirement
• Support for PHP email deployment may be necessary
• Cron or an equivalent scripting utility for scheduled times deployment should be available

A good Web host that specializes in PHP will allow you to easily upgrade from one plan to another whenever the need arises. Your host must offer you the bandwidth you need to support your traffic and provide you with the space you need for current and future data.

Your vendor’s good reputation is important. You’re entrusting your precious ecommerce earning potential to them. Safeguarding your e-resources and the privacy and security of your data is also essential. Submitting a test support ticket such as a sales inquiry is a good way to assess your host’s skills. The response you get will speak eloquently of the host’s knowledge and customer care.