Top 12 PHP Web Developer Skills to Put on Your Resume

In the dynamic field of web development, mastering PHP is a critical asset that can significantly enhance your professional portfolio. To stand out in the job market, knowing which PHP developer skills to highlight on your resume can be a game-changer in catching the attention of potential employers and securing your next opportunity.

PHP Web Developer Skills

1. PHP
2. Laravel
3. Symfony
4. MySQL
5. JavaScript
6. JQuery
7. HTML5
8. CSS3
9. Git
10. RESTful APIs
11. Composer
12. Docker

1. PHP

PHP is a server-side scripting language designed primarily for web development, enabling developers to create dynamic and interactive web pages.

Why It's Important

PHP is crucial for web development because it is a widely-used, open-source scripting language that enables developers to create dynamic and interactive web pages quickly. It seamlessly integrates with various databases, has a large community support, and is compatible with numerous servers and platforms, making it a versatile choice for building and maintaining robust websites and applications.

How to Improve PHP Skills

Improving your PHP skills as a web developer involves continuous learning and practice. Here are concise steps with resources for enhancement:

1. Stay Updated: Keep abreast with the latest PHP versions and features. PHP: Supported Versions offers insights into the current state of PHP version support.

2. Master the Basics: Ensure you have a strong grasp of PHP fundamentals. The PHP Manual is an invaluable resource.

3. Use a Framework: Learn one or more PHP frameworks (e.g., Laravel, Symfony) to improve efficiency and follow best practices. Start with Laravel or Symfony as they are among the most popular.

4. Follow Best Practices and Coding Standards: Adopting PHP-FIG's PSR standards promotes code consistency and interoperability.

5. Debugging and Testing: Get comfortable with debugging and writing tests for your code. Tools like Xdebug and PHPUnit can help. Explore Xdebug and PHPUnit.

6. Security Practices: Understand and apply PHP security best practices to protect your applications. The OWASP PHP Cheat Sheet provides guidelines for secure PHP development.

7. Performance Optimization: Learn techniques to optimize the performance of your PHP applications. The PHP Performance Tuning Guide offers practical advice.

8. Use Version Control: Familiarize yourself with Git for version control to manage and collaborate on your PHP projects efficiently. Git is essential for modern development workflows.

9. Contribute to Open Source: Engage with the PHP community by contributing to open-source projects. This experience can significantly enhance your skills. Explore GitHub for projects that interest you.

10. Continuous Learning: Keep learning new tools, techniques, and best practices. Follow PHP blogs, forums, and attend webinars or conferences. Websites like PHPDeveloper and PHP Watch offer updates and tutorials.

By following these steps and utilizing the provided resources, you can systematically improve your PHP development skills.

How to Display PHP Skills on Your Resume

2. Laravel

Laravel is a free, open-source PHP web framework used for building modern, secure, and scalable web applications, following the model-view-controller (MVC) architectural pattern. It provides tools and resources to streamline tasks like routing, authentication, caching, and database operations.

Why It's Important

Laravel is important for a PHP web developer because it provides a modern, elegant, and expressive syntax that simplifies web development by offering built-in functionalities for tasks like routing, authentication, caching, and sessions, significantly reducing development time and effort.

How to Improve Laravel Skills

Improving your Laravel skills as a PHP web developer involves a combination of understanding Laravel's core concepts, staying updated with the latest Laravel features, and practicing by building projects. Here's a concise guide:

1. Understand Laravel Fundamentals: Master the basics, such as routing, middleware, controllers, requests, and responses. The Laravel documentation is an excellent starting point.

2. Utilize Laravel Ecosystem: Explore and use Laravel's robust ecosystem, including Laravel Forge for server management, Laravel Nova for administration panel, and Laravel Envoy for task running.

3. Follow Best Practices: Write clean, maintainable code by following Laravel best practices. Resources like Laravel Best Practices can guide you.

4. Learn Testing: Become proficient in testing with PHPUnit and Laravel Dusk for browser testing. The Testing section in Laravel documentation provides a comprehensive guide.

5. Stay Updated: Laravel frequently updates its features. Follow the Laravel Blog and participate in the Laravel community on Laracasts and Laravel News to stay informed.

6. Practice: Work on real-world projects. Start with small projects and gradually increase complexity. GitHub and Laracasts have project ideas and tutorials.

7. Code Review and Feedback: Engage with the community on platforms like Laracasts forums and Laravel.io for code reviews and feedback.

8. Performance Optimization: Learn to optimize application performance through caching, efficient database queries, and using Laravel's built-in tools like Eloquent relationships. The Laravel Performance section on Laravel News can be helpful.

9. Security Best Practices: Understand and implement security best practices in Laravel applications, including proper use of CSRF tokens, secure authentication, and SQL injection prevention. The Security Practices section in the Laravel documentation is a must-read.

By dedicating time to learning, building, and interacting with the Laravel community, you can significantly improve your Laravel skills and become a more proficient PHP web developer.

How to Display Laravel Skills on Your Resume

3. Symfony

Symfony is an open-source PHP framework used for web application development, offering tools, components, and a structure to build robust, scalable, and high-performance web applications.

Why It's Important

Symfony is important for a PHP web developer because it provides a robust, scalable framework that streamlines the development process, offers reusable components, and encourages best practices and efficient code organization, significantly reducing development time and increasing application quality.

How to Improve Symfony Skills

To improve your Symfony skills as a PHP Web Developer, focus on the following concise strategies:

1. Official Documentation: Start with Symfony's official documentation. It's comprehensive and updated.

2. SymfonyCasts: Utilize SymfonyCasts for video tutorials that cater to all levels, from beginner to advanced.

3. GitHub Projects: Explore open-source Symfony projects on GitHub to see real-world applications and coding practices.

4. Symfony Blog: Follow the Symfony Blog for the latest news, updates, and tips from the Symfony community.

5. Join Symfony Slack: Engage with the community on the Symfony Slack channel. It’s great for getting answers to questions and networking with other developers.

6. Code Challenges: Practice coding with Symfony by tackling challenges on platforms like Codewars and filter for PHP related katas.

7. Contribute to Symfony: Get involved in the Symfony community by contributing to the Symfony GitHub repository. It’s a practical way to learn by doing.

By incorporating these resources and activities into your learning plan, you’ll be well on your way to mastering Symfony and enhancing your skills as a PHP Web Developer.

How to Display Symfony Skills on Your Resume

4. MySQL

MySQL is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) that uses SQL (Structured Query Language) for storing, retrieving, and managing data in web applications, widely used in PHP development environments.

Why It's Important

MySQL is essential for a PHP Web Developer because it provides a reliable, open-source database system for storing, retrieving, and managing data dynamically on websites, enabling efficient data-driven web application development.

How to Improve MySQL Skills

Improving MySQL performance involves several strategies focused on optimization, indexing, and server configuration. As a PHP web developer, consider the following concise tips to enhance your MySQL usage:

1. Optimize Queries: Write efficient SQL queries. Use EXPLAIN to analyze and optimize query performance. MySQL EXPLAIN
2. Use Indexes: Properly index your tables to speed up searches. However, avoid over-indexing. MySQL Indexing
3. Normalize Data: Structure your database properly to eliminate redundancy. However, denormalize if necessary for performance. Database Normalization
4. Configure MySQL: Tune MySQL settings in my.cnf for your workload. Adjust variables like innodb_buffer_pool_size. MySQL Configuration
5. Caching: Use MySQL's query cache or a front-end cache like Redis for frequently accessed data. MySQL Caching
6. Partitioning: For large tables, consider partitioning to improve performance and management. MySQL Partitioning
7. Update MySQL Version: Use the latest stable MySQL version for performance improvements and new features. MySQL Downloads

Each of these strategies can significantly impact the performance of your MySQL databases in a PHP development environment.

How to Display MySQL Skills on Your Resume

5. JavaScript

JavaScript is a dynamic, client-side scripting language used to create and control interactive content on websites, such as animations, forms, and real-time updates, enhancing user experiences. It can run in a browser or on servers via Node.js.

Why It's Important

JavaScript is crucial for enhancing interactivity, creating dynamic content, and improving user experiences on websites, complementing PHP's server-side capabilities by enabling client-side scripting for real-time updates and interactive web applications.

How to Improve JavaScript Skills

Improving your JavaScript skills as a PHP Web Developer involves understanding both the language fundamentals and its application in web development. Here's a concise guide:

1. Grasp the Basics: Ensure a solid understanding of JavaScript essentials, such as variables, data types, functions, and control structures. Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) is an excellent resource for learning.

2. Learn ES6 and Beyond: Modern JavaScript (ES6+) introduces many features that make development easier, such as arrow functions, promises, async/await, and more. ES6 Features provides good examples.

3. Understand the DOM: As a web developer, manipulating the Document Object Model (DOM) is crucial. Learn how to select, modify, and respond to events in the DOM. JavaScript.info is a great place to start.

4. Practice with Projects: Apply what you've learned in small projects. Building things like to-do lists or simple games can solidify your understanding. GitHub offers JavaScript Project Ideas for inspiration.

5. Explore Frameworks: Familiarize yourself with at least one JavaScript framework or library, such as React, Vue, or Angular. They streamline web development and are in high demand. The official documentation of React, Vue, and Angular are great starting points.

6. Debugging and Tools: Master debugging in JavaScript using the browser's developer tools and learn to use version control (git) efficiently. The Chrome DevTools documentation offers a deep dive into debugging.

7. Stay Updated and Network: JavaScript evolves rapidly. Follow blogs, join forums, and participate in communities like Stack Overflow or Reddit to stay updated and get help.

8. Read and Refactor Code: Reading others' code can offer new perspectives and solutions. Try to understand and refactor the code you come across. Sites like GitHub are valuable for exploring projects.

By consistently applying these strategies, your JavaScript skills will improve, enhancing your capabilities as a PHP web developer in creating dynamic and interactive web applications.

How to Display JavaScript Skills on Your Resume

6. JQuery

JQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library designed to simplify HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. It provides an easy-to-use API that works across a multitude of browsers, aimed at simplifying the client-side scripting of HTML. For a PHP web developer, it serves as a tool to enhance and manipulate the user interface and improve the user experience on the client side, while PHP handles the server-side logic.

Why It's Important

jQuery simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development, making it a valuable tool for a PHP web developer to enhance front-end interactivity and user experience efficiently.

How to Improve JQuery Skills

Improving your jQuery skills as a PHP web developer involves understanding best practices, optimizing performance, and staying updated with the latest features. Here are concise tips:

1. Understand jQuery Core: Dive deep into the core functions and methods. The official jQuery documentation is your best resource.

2. Master Selectors: Efficient use of selectors improves performance. Learn about different selectors and their use cases here.

3. Chain Methods: Reduce the number of times you traverse the DOM by chaining methods. This tutorial explains it well.

4. Use jQuery UI for UI components: Enhance user interfaces with jQuery UI. Explore components and themes here.

5. Optimize Performance: Understand how to make your jQuery code faster and more efficient. These performance tips are a great start.

6. Stay Updated: jQuery continues to evolve. Keep an eye on the official jQuery blog for updates and new features.

7. Practice: The best way to improve is by doing. Work on projects, experiment with new features, and build your own jQuery plugins.

By focusing on these areas, you can significantly enhance your jQuery skills in the context of PHP web development.

How to Display JQuery Skills on Your Resume

7. HTML5

HTML5 is the latest version of the Hypertext Markup Language used for structuring and presenting content on the web, incorporating new features like video, audio, and graphic elements, enhancing multimedia and interactive capabilities for more complex web applications.

Why It's Important

HTML5 provides a modern structure for web content, enabling PHP developers to create more interactive, accessible, and multimedia-rich applications efficiently, enhancing user experience and compatibility across devices.

How to Improve HTML5 Skills

Improving your HTML5 skills as a PHP Web Developer involves understanding the latest web standards, semantic markup, accessibility, and integrating PHP effectively. Here are concise tips:

1. Master Semantic Markup: Use HTML5 semantic elements (<article>, <section>, <nav>, <header>, <footer>) to improve the structure and accessibility of your web pages. Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) HTML5 Introduction.

2. Leverage Form Enhancements: Utilize HTML5 form inputs (date, email, range, etc.) for better user experience and validation. Integrate seamlessly with PHP for server-side processing. HTML5 Form Elements.

3. Implement Responsive Images: Use <picture>, srcset, and sizes attributes to create responsive images that work well on devices of all sizes, reducing bandwidth and improving loading times. Responsive Images Guide.

4. Understand Local Storage: Utilize HTML5 Web Storage API for storing data locally in the browser, which can be a powerful tool for creating dynamic, user-centric PHP applications. Using the Web Storage API.

5. Incorporate Multimedia Elements: Get familiar with <audio> and <video> tags for embedding media. This is essential for creating engaging web content that works across all modern browsers. HTML5 Multimedia.

6. Accessibility (A11Y): Ensure your web applications are accessible to everyone, including users with disabilities. This includes using ARIA roles where necessary and ensuring your HTML5 elements are used correctly. Web Accessibility Initiative.

7. Stay Updated and Practice: The web is always evolving. Follow blogs, forums, and news sites related to HTML5 and web development. Practice by building projects and experimenting with new features.

By focusing on these areas, you can significantly improve your HTML5 skills and create more effective, efficient, and accessible web applications as a PHP developer.

How to Display HTML5 Skills on Your Resume

8. CSS3

CSS3 is the latest version of the Cascading Style Sheets language used for styling web pages, providing enhanced features for visual effects, animations, and responsive design, crucial for a PHP web developer to create visually appealing and user-friendly interfaces.

Why It's Important

CSS3 enhances the visual appearance and interactivity of web pages, enabling PHP developers to create more visually appealing and user-friendly websites with responsive design, animations, and improved styling capabilities.

How to Improve CSS3 Skills

Improving your CSS3 skills, especially as a PHP web developer, involves understanding core concepts and applying best practices for efficient, responsive, and modern web designs. Here are concise tips with resources for further learning:

1. Master Flexbox and Grid: Understand the principles of CSS Flexbox and Grid to create responsive layouts efficiently. A Complete Guide to Flexbox, A Complete Guide to Grid.

2. Learn CSS Variables: Use CSS custom properties for more flexible and maintainable code. Using CSS Custom Properties (Variables).

3. Adopt Responsive Design Techniques: Ensure your designs work on all screen sizes using media queries. Using Media Queries.

4. Explore CSS Animations and Transitions: Enhance user experience with interactive elements. CSS Animations, CSS Transitions.

5. Utilize Preprocessors like Sass or LESS: Streamline your styling process with more structured and maintainable code. Sass Basics, LESS Introduction.

6. Practice Writing Efficient CSS: Learn to write clean, optimized CSS to improve load times and performance. Writing efficient CSS.

7. Stay Updated and Experiment: The web is constantly evolving. Keep learning new properties, techniques, and follow the latest trends. CSS-Tricks, Smashing Magazine.

8. Use Browser Developer Tools: Familiarize yourself with browser dev tools to debug and fine-tune your CSS in real-time. Get Started With Viewing And Changing CSS.

9. Participate in Communities: Engage with online communities (Reddit, Stack Overflow) to learn from others and get feedback on your work. r/css, Stack Overflow.

10. Build Projects: Practical experience is invaluable. Challenge yourself with projects that push your boundaries. Frontend Mentor offers real-world CSS challenges.

Incorporating these practices and resources into your development routine will significantly enhance your CSS3 proficiency.

How to Display CSS3 Skills on Your Resume

9. Git

Git is a version control system that allows PHP web developers to track and manage changes to their codebase, facilitating collaboration and code history tracking.

Why It's Important

Git is crucial for a PHP web developer because it enables version control for code, facilitating collaboration, tracking changes, and managing project versions efficiently, ensuring smoother development and deployment processes.

How to Improve Git Skills

Improving your Git skills as a PHP web developer involves mastering key concepts and tools that streamline version control for your projects. Here are concise tips with resources:

1. Understand Branching and Merging: Master Git branching models, especially Git Flow or GitHub Flow, to manage features, releases, and fixes efficiently. Atlassian Tutorial offers a comprehensive guide.

2. Use .gitignore: Customize .gitignore to exclude temporary files, dependencies (like vendor in PHP), or environment-specific files to keep your repository clean. GitHub's .gitignore Templates provides ready-to-use templates.

3. Leverage Git Hooks: Automate tasks like syntax checks or unit tests before commits or pushes using pre-commit or pre-push hooks. Atlassian's Git Hooks Tutorial guides on setting these up.

4. Commit Best Practices: Write meaningful commit messages and make small, atomic commits. This practice helps in understanding project history and troubleshooting. Conventional Commits offers a standardized format for commit messages.

5. Rebase for a Clean History: Use git rebase instead of git merge to keep your project history linear and more readable. Git Rebase Tutorial explains the process.

6. Learn Interactive Rebasing: For complex history rewriting and cleaning up commits before pushing, git rebase -i is invaluable. Interactive Rebasing Guide offers insights into its power.

7. Utilize Git Stash: When you need to quickly switch contexts, git stash allows you to save your working directory's changes without committing them. Git Stash Documentation explains its usage.

8. Explore GUI Tools: While the command line is powerful, GUI tools can offer visual insights into your repository. Tools like GitKraken or SourceTree can simplify complex Git operations. SourceTree and GitKraken websites provide details.

9. Continuous Integration (CI): Integrate Git with CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) tools like Jenkins, Travis CI, or GitHub Actions to automate testing and deployment. GitHub Actions for PHP CI showcases how to set up CI for PHP projects.

10. Stay Updated and Practice: Git evolves, and so should your knowledge. Follow Git's Official Documentation and practice using tools like Learn Git Branching to sharpen your skills.

Improving your Git proficiency not only enhances your workflow but also makes collaboration with teams more efficient.

How to Display Git Skills on Your Resume

10. RESTful APIs

RESTful APIs are interfaces that allow web applications to communicate and exchange data over HTTP using standard methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE, adhering to statelessness, cacheability, and a uniform interface, making them ideal for web developers to implement standardized interactions between clients and servers.

Why It's Important

RESTful APIs are critical for PHP web developers because they enable the efficient design, development, and integration of web services and applications. They provide a standardized approach to create, read, update, and delete resources over the web, facilitating seamless communication and data exchange between different systems and platforms. This enhances the scalability, maintainability, and performance of web applications, allowing developers to build more responsive and user-friendly experiences.

How to Improve RESTful APIs Skills

Improving RESTful APIs involves enhancing their efficiency, reliability, security, and user-friendliness. As a PHP web developer, consider the following concise tips:

1. Use HTTP Methods Properly: Ensure you're using HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc.) appropriately to reflect the action being performed. REST API Tutorial

2. Implement Versioning: Version your API to manage changes seamlessly without breaking existing clients. API Versioning

3. Secure Your API: Implement authentication and authorization mechanisms like OAuth 2.0, and ensure data is transmitted over HTTPS. OAuth 2.0

4. Utilize Caching: Use HTTP caching mechanisms to reduce server load and improve response times. Caching Tutorial

5. Optimize Data Formats: Use efficient data formats like JSON for API responses and requests, ensuring they are concise and easy to parse. JSON

6. Error Handling: Provide meaningful HTTP status codes and error messages to help clients handle errors gracefully. HTTP Status Codes

7. Rate Limiting: Implement rate limiting to prevent abuse and ensure fair usage among clients. Rate Limiting Guide

8. Documentation: Create comprehensive and clear documentation for your API, making it easier for developers to integrate with. Swagger

9. Use RESTful Principles: Stick to REST principles like statelessness and resource identification for a consistent and predictable API. REST Principles

Applying these tips can significantly improve the quality and usability of your RESTful APIs in PHP.

How to Display RESTful APIs Skills on Your Resume

11. Composer

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP, allowing developers to manage and incorporate third-party libraries and packages into their projects easily.

Why It's Important

Composer is crucial for a PHP web developer because it simplifies dependency management, allowing easy installation and updating of libraries and packages necessary for a project, ensuring compatibility and streamlining the development process.

How to Improve Composer Skills

To improve your skills with Composer, a dependency manager for PHP, follow these concise steps:

1. Understand Basic Concepts: Familiarize yourself with the fundamental concepts of Composer by reading the official introduction.

2. Master the Command Line: Enhance your command-line skills with Composer by exploring the full list of commands.

3. Version Control Integration: Learn to integrate Composer with version control systems like Git by understanding Composer and version control.

4. Package Management: Deepen your knowledge of package management by creating and managing your packages. Start by reading the guide on how to submit packages to Packagist.

5. Autoloading: Improve performance and maintainability with Composer's autoloading mechanism. Read about PSR-4 autoloading.

6. Optimization: Learn about optimizing your Composer setup for better performance by exploring optimization tips.

7. Security Practices: Stay updated on security best practices by reviewing the security advisories.

8. Community Engagement: Engage with the Composer community through forums and GitHub to stay informed about the latest developments and share knowledge.

By adhering to these steps and continuously seeking out new learning resources, you'll significantly improve your Composer skills as a PHP web developer.

How to Display Composer Skills on Your Resume

12. Docker

Docker is a platform that allows developers to package applications into containers—standardized executable components combining application source code with the operating system (OS) libraries and dependencies required to run that code in any environment. For a PHP web developer, Docker simplifies the process of setting up and sharing environments, ensuring consistency across development, testing, and production systems, and facilitating microservices architecture by isolating services in separate containers.

Why It's Important

Docker simplifies development by allowing PHP web developers to create, deploy, and run applications in isolated environments called containers, ensuring consistency across different stages of development, testing, and production, while minimizing compatibility issues and streamlining deployment processes.

How to Improve Docker Skills

Improving your Docker setup as a PHP Web Developer involves enhancing performance, security, and workflow efficiency. Here are concise tips with external resources for in-depth guidance:

1. Optimize Dockerfile:Minimize layers and use multi-stage builds to reduce the image size, improving build time and deployment speed.

   • Dockerfile best practices

2. Use .dockerignore:Exclude unnecessary files (e.g., local vendor folders, logs) to speed up the build process.

   • .dockerignore file

3. Leverage Docker Compose:Simplify multi-container setup (e.g., PHP, Nginx, MySQL) using Docker Compose for local development.

   • Get started with Docker Compose

4. Implement Health Checks:Ensure your containers are healthy and restart them automatically if they’re not.

   • Healthcheck instruction

5. Secure Your Images:Regularly scan your Docker images for vulnerabilities and apply best practices for security.

   • Docker security scanning

6. Use Official Base Images:Start with official and minimal base images (e.g., php:7.4-fpm-alpine) for security and efficiency.

   • Docker Official Images

7. Continuous Integration (CI):Automate testing and deployment with CI tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI) to ensure code quality and streamline workflows.

   • Building a PHP project

8. Volume Mounting for Development:Use volumes to mount source code into containers, enabling live code changes without rebuilding the image.

   • Manage data in Docker

9. Environment Variables for Configuration:Configure your application using environment variables to easily change settings between environments.

   • Environment variables in Compose

10. Keep Docker and Dependencies Up to Date:Regularly update Docker, Docker Compose, and your application dependencies to benefit from performance improvements and security patches.

By implementing these strategies, you’ll improve your Docker usage, making your development workflow more efficient and your applications more robust and secure.

How to Display Docker Skills on Your Resume