Our Web Technology

Since its invention in 1994, PHP has established itself as one of the web’s primary programming languages. Pure PHP code is secure, powerful, and great for developing fully customizable applications – it’s also notoriously abstract and difficult to master.

Difficult, but not impossible: As experienced PHP developers, this is one of the primary technologies we use. Leveraging Model View Controller framework architectures like Laravel or working entirely with raw PHP, we help clients create static sites without databases, dynamic sites with databases, and secure applications with no connected software architecture.

Laravel is a structured software framework that enables developers to simplify PHP development. Its MVC architecture allows for scalability, speed, security, and structure, while also making it easier to add new features over time.

At IronGlove, Laravel is one of our go-to frameworks for larger clients requiring industrial uses or businesses that require online systems to interface with customers. Laravel works great with relational databases and is able to handle integrations that other software frameworks struggle with. If you’re building a serious web application that uses dynamic data, this is what you want.

WordPress is one of the most popular CMS platforms in the world, but when you strip away all the amateurs who rely on 3^rd party plug-ins and templates, it’s actually a bit of an underrated gem.

As programmers and not plug-in vendors, the IronGlove team views WordPress as a hybrid software application delivery framework and codes it just like we would with Laravel or Drupal. The only difference? Applications developed in WordPress can often be upwards of $10k cheaper for our clients. It’s not a great fit for every project, but when it fits, the cost-effectiveness can’t be beaten.

WooCommerce is an open-source plugin-based system that turns WordPress websites into online stores. Its core selling features are perfect for small or mid-sized e-commerce frameworks, but WooCommerce is powerful enough to handle big tasks too. It’s great for integrating with other WordPress content, such as landing pages.

One of the drawbacks to WooCommerce is that, like Word Press itself, it can tend to feel homogenized. We develop custom interfaces to work around this and give clients the fully customized store they deserve.

Drupal might be lesser known than other content management systems, but that’s mostly because of its complexity. In the hands of a skilled PHP developer with coding experience, this open-source, barebones framework is incredibly powerful.

It’s proficient at handling databases, 100% customizable, and almost impossible to hack. Security is one of the reasons Drupal is used by Tesla, Google, and many state/county governments. Because the software is difficult to maintain, we typically only use Drupal for industrial applications that need a high margin of uptime.

UX/UI design plays an outsized role in the journey that users take towards a positive interaction with your brand. As such, this is a foundational aspect of our entire web design strategy.

UX, or user experience, is all about the user, relying heavily on behavioral psychology and other data-supported insights. UI, short for user interface, refers to the mechanisms in place to support that journey. Though not technically a ‘technology’, UI/UX design is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal and a key competitive advantage.

Not to be confused with SaaS, Sass stands for Syntactically Awesome Stylesheet. A pre-processor for CSS, Sass allows coding logic to be included in website styles for increased flexibility and provides a minimalistic programmatic structure that lets developers use variables instead of writing code over and over again

The version we use at IronGlove is SCSS, which is CSS compatible. Sass is useful for working on very large projects where there are a lot of functions and pages. It is compatible with Bootstrap, one of our main front-end frameworks – we can customize Bootstrap by modifying the core coding in Sass. Another advantage of Sass is that it is compatible with multiple browsers.

Angular is a JavaScript framework that’s used in conjunction with web applications. Made from both JavaScript and TypeScript, this open-source framework is maintained by Google.

One of Angular’s primary functions is to bring user interactivity to online web applications. Gmail, Upwork, and PayPal are a few of the many companies that use the Angular framework to bring their UI to life in a predictable, logic-based fashion. Angular uses an MVC architecture and is compatible with many other popular PHP frameworks, including Laravel.

Bootstrap is a popular front-end framework that allows developers to create a mobile-ready website out of the box.  Front-end developers used to have to create classes for font sizes, colors, containers, buttons, and more – with Bootstrap, all this is pre-configured and ready to go.

In addition to making sites mobile-friendly, Bootstrap is also compatible with accessibility standards and screen readers, making it a great first step towards compliance. The framework comes precompiled, but the code can also be compiled and customized for specialized applications using Sass.

Magento Open Source is an open-source e-commerce platform with a well-deserved reputation for quality and reliability. Its streamlined, minimalist approach to e-commerce is perfect for stores that don’t need the full features of Adobe Commerce or the content management of WordPress with WooCommerce. 

Unlike WooCommerce, many of Magento’s features are readily available with no coding: mobile-only features, integrated full-featured checkout, payments and shipment handling, promos, SEO features, customer accounts, and site search can all be easily integrated into the store.