PHP has a reputation problem. The reputation is based on codebases written ten years ago by developers who did not know better. Modern PHP — PHP 8.3, typed, tested, deployed with Composer and Docker — is a serious platform for serious applications. Key Brains has been writing PHP since the early days and has the scar tissue to prove what happens when it is done badly. Everything we build today is done well.
Laravel applications
Laravel is our default PHP framework for new applications. It provides a mature ecosystem — Eloquent ORM, queuing with Horizon, task scheduling, broadcasting, and an excellent testing suite with Pest or PHPUnit. We use it for APIs, web applications, background processing systems, and multi-tenant SaaS platforms. We do not fight the framework.
WordPress development
WordPress powers a significant portion of the web, and we take WordPress development seriously. We build custom themes and plugins to production standards — no page builders, no bloated plugin stacks, no shortcuts that create maintenance nightmares. We build headless WordPress configurations with REST API or WPGraphQL for clients who need WordPress as a CMS with a modern frontend.
Legacy PHP modernisation
We have rescued many PHP applications that were written without tests, without a framework, with global variables and mixed HTML and logic in the same file. We know how to incrementally modernise a legacy codebase without stopping the business — adding a routing layer, introducing dependency injection, writing characterisation tests before refactoring, and migrating to a modern deployment pipeline while the old system remains live.
Performance
PHP is fast when you use it correctly. OpCache configuration, query optimisation, Redis for session storage and caching, queue offloading for slow operations, and CDN integration for static assets. We have optimised PHP applications from two-second response times to under one hundred milliseconds without rewriting the application.
Testing
Every PHP application we build has a test suite. Unit tests for domain logic, feature tests for HTTP endpoints, and browser tests with Laravel Dusk for critical user journeys. We enforce test coverage thresholds in CI and treat a failing test as a broken build.