Categories: Web Development

Wanted: Full-Stack PHP Web Developer

By: OmniSpearPosted on

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Job Description:
OmniSpear, Inc. is currently seeking versatile individuals eager to join our team of talented web professionals. Working in a business-to-business environment, you will be responsible for developing large and small web-based applications for our clients. Projects range from custom websites to complex SaaS, ERP and CRM systems.

This is a full-time, remote, work from home position . You must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

Apply Now at careers@omnispear.com

Requirements:

  • 3 to 5 years of experience with PHP / Laravel
  • Show the capability to learn new languages and existing code bases quickly
  • Experience with SQL (dialect not important)
  • Experience with JavaScript Frameworks and HTML/CSS
  • Clear communication and comprehension skills
  • Ability to manage multiple tasks simultaneously
  • Experience using source control such as Git

Responsibilities:

  • Develop, support, and maintain web-based applications
  • Identify opportunities for application scalability, sustainability & improvement
  • Evaluate customer or internally-driven functionality change requests for technical feasibility and level of effort
  • Track time spent on projects effectively
  • Document and write tests for code
  • Follow established development standards for the company and clients

Bonus Skills:

  • Experience with Continuous Integration or Automated Deployments
  • Experience with Linux web server configuration

Perks:

  • Health Insurance
  • IRA Plan with matching
  • Casual work environment
  • Friday Afternoon Creative Coding

Send resumes to careers@omnispear.com.

OmniSpear develops fresh website for a longtime client!

By: OmniSpearPosted on

OmniSpear has worked with James Investment Research for over 10 years proving everything from developing complex stock web applications to routine IT support. Recently the OmniSpear team gave their corporate website a facelift making it more mobile friendly, providing account login access as well as dynamic updates / integration to mutual fund data.

https://www.jamesinvestment.com/

How to Write an Efficient RFP

By: OmniSpearPosted on
Ask A Developer Feature Article
A regular column featuring answers from the team at OmniSpear

The benefits of having a system customized to your business workflow are often motivating factors in deciding to hire a custom development team to reorganize your business workflow and improve operations. We often find that one of the biggest challenges of hiring a custom software development shop to build your application is ensuring the development team understands your business’s needs and how the application will be used by your team. 

To help bring each of the teams together to reach an end goal of developing a custom application that is functional and efficient, we recommend working with a good in-house business analyst or hiring a development shop that provides that service as a part of their process. A business analyst will capture your business requirements, clarify needs and expectations, and write practical use cases that represent the way your team will use the software. After your team agrees to the requirements and use cases, the business analyst will work collaboratively with the lead developer on your project to design the system architecture, database and technology stack that best serves your needs.

Without this critical step of translating the application design into terms familiar to the entire team, along with clear direction and team synergy the final application may not be exactly what your team was hoping for. Whether the project is fixed-bid or hourly, any good development team is committed to efficiently coding the application and without thoroughly defined use cases, their commitment to code-efficiency could motivate developers to streamline the application, often resulting in the loss of critical workflow features. While technically meeting functionality requirements, the overall usefulness of the application to your business is lost.

When scoping projects and putting together your next RFP it is critical to outline clear needs for your application, put together thorough use cases and be upfront with needs and expectations with your development team. Our development team has 100+ years of combined experience over 35 projects. We’d be happy to work with your team and are committed to supporting our clients through each phase of the development process.

Have a question? Email info@omnispear.com for answers from the OmniSpear team.

Outsourcing Custom Software Development

By: OmniSpearPosted on

You’ve decided to invest in technology to take your company to the next level. Now what? OmniSpear shares its perspective about outsourcing custom software and mobile app development.

Eighteen years of custom software development experience provides perspective. The growth of cloud computing, the power of bandwidth and advancements in programming languages have increased the complexity of software development and created pressure for companies to invest in technology to remain accessible to their customers. A website is no longer enough. Both consumers and business-to-business customers are enticed by customized online and mobile connections tailored to their specific needs and interests.

Creating customized connections requires more than a CMS with a shopping cart plugin.  Many small and medium-sized businesses are investing in custom software solutions and mobile applications to create unique experiences for their customers.  And some have the opportunity monetize the connection through the creation of subscription-based services known as SaaS.

Embarking on a custom software development project is a very different endeavor than designing a website.  Website mechanics are pretty well set and the key to success is good graphic design and marketing content. A well resourced marketing department and website development partner can successfully launch a new website for a company.

With custom software, mobile apps and SaaS offerings, the development project will draw upon operational and technical experts within the company as well as marketing.  A successful development partner carefully listens to the needs of all company stakeholders and coordinates the differing perspectives as they relate to the project goals.

Across eighteen years, OmniSpear has been in the trenches with hundreds of clients.  Won some. Lost some. And through these experiences, OmniSpear knows what it takes to succeed. Listen. Develop. Deliver.

Contact OmniSpear for your custom software development needs.

Coding Standards & Reviews – Our Motivation

By: OmniSpearPosted on

Developing “clean” code is very important for any web / mobile application development firm, and making maintainable, readable, and documented code helps OmniSpear keep a competitive edge and a superior product. Our team has a strong focus on coding standards and cleanliness. This disciplined approach gives both our developers and our clients the benefit of clean, robust, and maintainable code.

Our Motivation

As a firm focused on its clients and developers, OmniSpear prides itself on delivering clean, robust, and maintainable code. This is the drive that led us to introduce our own set of coding standards, following best practices as well as some additional “secret sauce”.

Image result for coding standard memeCoding Standards are important for a number of reasons. Some reasons include:

  1. The cost of maintenance is directly affected by the cleanliness and the amount of documentation in the code
  2. Code sometimes changes ownership, and the cost of cross-training can be expensive. With documented code, there is less training
  3. And obviously, coding standards improve the quality of code by making it easier to understand and improving readability.

Code Reviews

Like any set of rules or guidelines they have to be enforced. Our internal process requires all new code to be checked for standards compliance by another team member before being made live to the customer / world. The time and money spent on doing code reviews has proven time and time again to be well worth it. Some of the core benefits include:

  1. Another set of eyes on the code / project is insurance for us and our clients. If one our developers goes on vacation or gets hit by a bus, the other developer(s) that did the code review will be able to pick up where they left off.
  2. We catch all kinds of things! After all we’re human and make mistakes. Two or more sets of eyes is always better than one.

The Benefits of Providing a Quality Mobile Experience

By: OmniSpearPosted on

Mobile web traffic surpassed desktops back in late 2015. Since that time, mobile device usage has skyrocketed with 57% of all web traffic now mobile. More than ever before, people have a higher expectation of their mobile experience with brands on their phone. Every experience matters and with users primarily interacting on their phones, it’s more important than ever to get it right.

We have a few observations and tips that you should focus on to help your users have a quality mobile experience. One of the biggest complaints from mobile users is that they have a ‘slow experience’. Google provides a testing tool to address this and will report how well your site performs in a mobile environment.

Finding the information that a user is looking for is also critical for having a successful mobile presence. Simplifying the site navigation on mobile devices is part of the solution. Incorporating a ‘hamburger’ menu with direct links to important information is something we incorporate into all our responsive web sites.

Interrupting the mobile experience should be done with great caution. Pop-ups and full-screen ads that block people from seeing your content contribute to a negative mobile experience. On a desktop it may be easy to just ‘click off’ an ad but on mobile is may completely lock the viewer out of seeing any relevant information. The Coalition for Better Ads provides some good insight into the least preferred ad experiences for desktop and mobile web.

With rapid advances in technology and users spending more and more time on their smartphones, providing a quality mobile experience is key to your online success.

Import Car Repair Shop Gets a Tune-Up.

By: OmniSpearPosted on

Dayton Website designerWe’ve known Dale at Euro Classics for years and finally convinced him of a much needed site overhaul. His shop was well known in the enthusiast community for their quality and craftsmanship. Our mission was to help him expand his reach to all import car owners regardless if it was a Volkswagen or a Ferrari.

The solution for Euro Classics was based off a Laravel PHP framework. Our custom blogging platform allows Euro Classics to easily maintain their shop news without the need to learn a full CMS. For our web development team, coding the pages directly in an IDE is considerably faster than the drag-n-drop or WYSIWYG interfaces associated with most platforms. This allowed our team to turn the site around much faster and with greater control over the appearance.

We look forward to seeing the site perform well as there is a fair amount of competition among Foreign car repair shops in the Dayton area.