Hey everyone, I recently released my latest PHP Projects List . It has all the best Free tools I have found for PHP development. I wanted to create a page with all the best free tools listed out with a brief description of what each is used for.
We live in a world with limited resources and time, so if you want it done fast and correctly you might as well cut down on everything that can be automated or taken off your plate.
PHPStorm
PHPStorm is the best IDE for PHP developer and comes packed with the freshest set of features that facilitate swift web development. It is developed and promoted by a company named JetBrains. It is in the midst of the most accepted companies in developer tools market and is making PHP coding software simpler and pleasant for developers for preceding 15 to 16 years.PHPStorm works well with key frameworks like Symfony, Zend Framework, Yii, CakePHP and Laravel. It even supports chief Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Drupal, Magento, and WordPress.Any web development project is not absolute without front-end technologies and that is where PHPStorm works the best. It enables live editing of front-end technologies including CSS, Sass, HTML5, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, JavaScript, Stylus, Less and others. It enables code refactoring, debugging and unit testing.When it comes to best tools for PHP developers, it provides access and integration with sturdy version control systems, different databases, PHP MySQL development tool, vagrant, composer, remote deployment, rest client and command line tools. From debugging viewpoint, it works with Zend Debugger and Xdebug, both remotely and locally.PHPStorm is an enterprise grade IDE, which comes with a license price and largely targets specialized developers. It, on the other hand, is offered, free of cost to students, teachers and to enable open source projects.The reputation of PHPStorm can be gauged from the reality that big brands like Yahoo, Expedia, Cisco, Wikipedia, and Salesforce have bought PHPStorm IDE licenses.
Zend Studio
Zend Studio is a PHP IDE that helps in developing PHP applications and deploying them on a server with cloud support.
Features:
- Supports the development of mobile apps for your existing PHP applications.
- It provides built-in deployment functionality to deploy applications in the cloud.
- Code editor provides many features like Refactoring, Auto-completion, etc.
Supported Platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac, and IBM I.
Supported Languages: PHP
Cost Details:
- For Commercial use: $189 with one year free upgrades.
- For Personal use: $89 with one year free upgrades.
Official website: Zend Studio
Coda
- Platform(s): Mac OS X
- Supported Languages: HTML
- Price: USD 99
- More Information: Touch Bar ready, FTP, SFTP, FTP+SSL, and WebDAV client
- Visit: Coda
Brackets
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
- Supported Languages: C++, C, VBScript, Java, JavaScript, HTML, Python, Perl, Ruby
- Price: FREE (MIT License)
- More Information: Live Preview, JSLint, LESS support
- Visit: Brackets
SlickEdit
- Platform(s): Cross-platform
- Supported Languages: GNU C/C++, Java, WinDbg, Clang C/C++ LLDB, Google Go, Groovy, Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP, XCode, Android JVM/NDK.
- Price: SlickEdit Standard (USD 99.95), SlickEdit Standard for Enterprise (USD 149.95), Check prices for Pro versions.
- More Information: Support for Git, Subversion, Mercurial, Perforce, CVS
- Visit: SlickEdit
jEdit
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD, OS/2, UNIX, VMS
- Supported Languages: See complete list
- Price: FREE (GPL v2)
- More Information: Open source, Split Windows, extensive library of plugins
- Visit: jEdit
Programmer’s Notepad
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows
- Supported Languages: See complete list
- Price: FREE (revised BSD)
- More Information: Open source, Folding, Plugins
- Visit: Programmer’s Notepad
Codelobster IDE modernizes and simplifies the PHP development procedures. You don’t require keeping in mind the names of functions, arguments, tags, and attributes. The platform has enabled all these for you with auto complete functions intended for PHP, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.An internal free PHP Debugger facilitates you to validate the code on a local basis. It automatically detects your existing server settings and configures related files to let you utilize the debugger.Codelobster IDE has the following features and capabilities to work with Magento:
Higher capacity to build projects automatedly installing Magento platform
Autocomplete for Magento methodologies
Tooltips for Magento methodologies, Context, and Dynamic help
Codelobster IDE backs Windows, Mac OS, Linux, WordPress, Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, etc. and has exceptional plug-ins for working smoothly with Joomla, Drupal, Twig, JQuery, Symfony, CodeIgniter, Node.js, BackboneJS, EmberJS, CakePHP, VueJS, Laravel, AngularJS, Phalcon, Magento, and Yii.So, Which PHP code editor can I choose? Let’s explore some more options.
Novi HTML visual editor, the technical side of the HTML editor, was enormously user-oriented. In 2016, Elementor for WordPress was the only proficient drag & drop editor that offered WYSIWYG abilities. So, people required something such as that for HTML-based online projects.Firstly, Novi facilitated non-technical professionals to design their websites without difficulty. Secondly, the builder turned useful to multiple web designers as well as developers. This visual HTML editor enabled all over the world to further the working process effortlessly.The fundamental actions and features users were able to execute with Novi:
Craft clean, structured site layouts with a code-free approach
Enabled drag and drop technology
Design pages of utilizing ready-made content modules
Generate visitor-friendly web portal navigation
Customize UI and UX elements
Use of ready-made content blocks
Set-up elements swiftly
Handling media library
Change color schemes, gradients, and images
Enabling CSS, HTML, and JS code
Facilitating contact forms, popups, and mapsApplying visual effects, carousels, countdown timers, and slidersSo, which IDEs are the best for PHP development? Let’s explore some more alternatives.
Komodo IDE
Komodo IDE supports many languages. It provides many features too. It offers functionalities for development teams. It is an extensible system through add-ons.
Features:
- Auto-completion & Refactoring features for the code editor.
- Visual Debugger.
- Workflow management.
Supported Platforms: Windows, Linux, and Mac.
Supported Languages: PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, SQL, CSS, HTML, XML, and Smarty.
Cost Details:
- For Single-user: $394
- For 5 licenses: $1675
- For a Team (20+): Contact them.
Official website: Komodo IDE
Cloud 9 IDE
Cloud 9 IDE is an online service provided by Amazon for writing, running, and debugging the code. You can work together with the team and can share your code easily.
Features:
- Auto-completion and guidance for the code.
- Step-through debugging.
- Helps in building serverless applications.
Supported Platforms: Cloud-based
Supported Languages: Node.js, JavaScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Go, and C++.
Cost Details: Price depends on usage. It starts at $1.85 per month.
Official website: Cloud 9
NetBeans is the PHP IDE for plenty; it is attributed rich, free and enables manifold languages, counting English, Russian, Japanese, Brazilian, Portuguese, and basic Chinese. The free version of NetBeans dates back to 2010 when it was originally prepared open source by Sun Microsystems, getting hold by Oracle afterward.Ever since its release, NetBeans boosts one of the largest communities of developers operational on an open source integrated development environment being downloaded 18+ million times.Gone are the days when this tool was sluggish and was known only for development in Java, the existing stable release of NetBeans is lightweight, much quicker and supports the whole thing in PHP. It has the best support resources for all the rage PHP frameworks like Zend, Smarty Doctrine, and Symfony2. It even supports Laravel through Laravel-ide-helper and enables support for frameworks such as Yii, FuelPHP, CakePHP and WordPress CMS.Some of the essential features that keep NetBeans on a peak of the list comprise code generation tools like getter setter generation, smart code completion, code templates, quick fixes, hints and refactoring. Other fundamental features supported include try/catch code completion, code folding, and formatting as well as rectangular selection.When it comes to debugging, you can moreover use a command line or xDebug together locally and remotely. NetBeans PHP Editor supports web development taking into account JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. All these features simply make NetBeans as the paramount open source PHP IDE.which PHP IDE comes with SSH support and which PHP IDE has Git support? Yes, NetBeans, you guessed it right.
Sublime Text
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
- Supported Languages: All popular languages
- Price: USD 70/license
- More Information: Package Manager
- Visit: Sublime Text
Visual Studio Code
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
- Supported Languages: Batch, C++, Clojure, CoffeeScript, DockerFile, Elixir, F#, Go, Pug template language, Java, HandleBars, Ini, Lua, Makefile, Objective-C, Perl, PowerShell, Python, R, Razor, Ruby, Rust, SQL, Visual Basic, XML
- Price: FREE (MIT License)
- More Information: GitHub support, code refactoring, debugger
- Visit: Visual Studio Code
Atom
- Platform(s): Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
- Supported Languages: HTML, CSS, Less, Sass, GitHub Flavored Markdown, C/C++, C#, Go, Java, Objective-C, JavaScript, JSON, CoffeeScript, Python, PHP, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, shell script, Clojure, Perl, Git, Make, Property List (Apple), TOML, XML, YAML, Mustache, Julia & SQL
- Price: FREE (MIT License)
- More Information: Open source, built-in Package Manager, Themes.
- Visit: Atom
NuSphere
It is another company that is keen on developing best tools of PHP products to step up web development experience and PHPED is the IDE they have to propose.
It supports the most recent release of PHP Editor that supports PHP 7 and many other new as well as old PHP frameworks which includes Laravel, Yii and Symfony to include few along with the Content management systems (CMSs) like WordPress and Joomla. The added feature with the most up-to-date release is the capability to run unit tests for mutually local and remote projects.
In summing up, NuSphere PHPED IDE is a packed stack web development tool that comes full with support for JavaScript debugging, CSS pre-processing with LESS pre-processor, HTML5 and rest of everything in PHP.
Having supposed that, I would rate Zend and PHPStorm superior to NuSphere in terms of style, the end to end customer support, enhanced documentation and release execution in the required commercial space.
Conclusion
Like everyone else, I think NetBeans is the best IDE for PHP. But everyone else thinks so too so the real question is, “What are some alternatives?” My answer to this question is there are some places I would look to first….