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Benefits of S.E.O

Written by Amanda on May 04, 2020
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As a marketer that works with web developers daily, I know that content may not be top priority on their long list of to-do’s. However, for the success of a company, it is essential. If your team doesn’t have a designated marketing person or team, and you’re not a seasoned content creator, I have 3 letters for you to learn: S.E.O.

 

So what is SEO? It stands for search engine optimization. Basically this represents guidelines for gaining traffic to your website (or one you’ve been hired to create), and doing it organically. What is organic traffic? This is the results people see without being targeted, no paid ads, no cold calling - just desired results because your company offers something that they are interested in. 

 

Today’s market is extremely competitive, so it is important to take every step in making sure that your webpage stands out and is easy to find. Think about how you find information daily… how to make fried chicken? Where to get your car fixed? Or even when a new movie is being released? You search for it, online, right? 9 times out of 10, you’re probably going to run a search for it on a site like Google, right? Then, most likely, you’re going to click on one of the first couple results that pop up on your screen, because they include keywords relevant to the search that you performed. This is an example of SEO. You search for a term that is relevant or appears on a company’s website, and Google recognizes that term/phrase and yields the webpage to you as a result. Thus, increasing traffic for the website, and a lot of times, without any cost to them. 

 

Utilizing this idea, or service, is essential for any marketing department. Actually, according to a recent survey done by HubSpot, about 64% of marketers actively invest time in search engine optimization. So if you're not, you're falling behind. 

 

 Now that you have a basic understanding of what SEO is, we can talk about some of the benefits. 

 

1. Better PR

 

The better your SEO is, the more people that will see your company name pop up on their search engine results. While most companies, like CakeDC, offer specific services (and input specific keywords into ads), we have very detailed SEO streaming from our website so that we do not miss a potential client. It is the goal to be in the top 3 results of a search engine like Google.  

Even if someone is searching for something your company doesn’t offer, they may see you, remember you, and use you in the future. win-win. Start building your reputation! For example if you wanted to search for CakePHP web development, you may see:

 

 

2. Increased Traffic 

 

This is a no brainer. The more keywords that trigger your webpage at the top of consumer results, the more people that will click. This generates better quality leads, in my opinion. Things like cold calling, or cold emailing, while still effective, have become outdated. Inbound marketing compared to these avenues has produced better return, without becoming annoying to your potential leads. When you aim your focus on specific consumers looking for services that are related to your business, you can build better relationships. 

 

3. FREE

 

Perhaps the best benefit of SEO? The cost… or lack of cost. SEO gets clicks, and sales (we hope!) for the wonderful price of $0 per month. How? Well, Google’s organic rankings come from their algorithm, which determines which webpage’s information relates closely to the “searcher’s” inquiry. This can result from keywords coming from your web pages that may not be imputed on any sort of ads you may be running (we will talk about paid ads in a future blog). 

 

This doesn’t mean that getting a perfect SEO score (yes, you can test it) comes for free. It is important to have good content, detailed content, in all areas on your webpage. Make sure each page describes services you provide, or products that you sell, in great detail. Have pages for each option, and make it accessible like this:

 

 

 

It’s time to beat out the competition, are you ready? I first recommend seeing where you stand. There are a few tools you can use to test your SEO score. One example is: Woorank. I like this site because it gives you your score, shows the good, the bad, and the ugly. The tool also shows you what you can and should do to improve your SEO. You can try most tools for free, or get extra optimization help by paying a premium. 

 

Once you run a report, it’s time to get to work. Fix the issues, and constantly monitor your information. I do think it’s important to mention - don’t expect results to happen overnight, it can take up to 6 months for SEO strategies to yield return. If you’re like me, and impatient, just chill. Put the work in, and get the reward.

 

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Written by Rcardoso on December 17, 2025

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The Inflector (Or why CakePHP speaks better English than me)

This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2025 (December 18th 2025) I have been working with CakePHP for more than 15 years now. I love the conventions. I also love that I don't have to configure every single XML file, like in the old Java days. But let's be honest: as a Spanish native speaker, naming things in English can sometimes be a nightmare. In Spanish, life is simple. You have a Casa (house), you add an "s", you have Casas (houses). You have a Camión (truck), you add "es", you have Camiones (trucks). Logic! But in English? You have a mouse, and suddenly you have mice. You have a person, and it becomes people. You have a woman and it becomes women. This is why the Inflector class is not just a utility for me. It is my personal English teacher living inside the /vendor folder.

It covers my back

When I started with CakePHP 15 years ago, I was always scared to name a database table categories. I was 100% sure that I would break the framework because I would name the model Categorys or something wrong. But! CakePHP knows better. It knows irregular verbs and weird nouns better than I do. use Cake\\Utility\\Inflector; // The stuff I usually get right echo Inflector::pluralize('User'); // Users // The stuff I would definitely get wrong without coffee echo Inflector::pluralize('Person'); // People echo Inflector::pluralize('Child'); // Children

Variable Naming (CamelCase vs underscore)

The other battle I have fought for 15 years is the variable naming convention. Is it camelCase? Is it PascalCase? Is it underscore_case? My brain thinks in Spanish, translates to English, and then tries to apply PSR-12 standards. It is a lot of processing power. Fortunately, when I am building dynamic tools, I just let the Inflector handle the formatting: // Converting my database column to a nice label echo Inflector::humanize('published_date'); // Output: Published Date // Converting a string to a valid variable name echo Inflector::variable('My Client ID'); // Output: myClientId

When Spanglish happens

Of course, after so many years, sometimes a Spanish word slips into the database schema. It happens to the best of us. If I create a table called alumnos (students), CakePHP tries its best, but it assumes it is English.
Inflector::singularize('alumnos') -> Alumno (It actually works! Lucky.)
But sometimes it fails funny. If I have a Jamon (Ham), Cake thinks the plural is Jamons. So, for those rare moments where my English fails, I can teach the Inflector a bit of Spanish in bootstrap.php: Inflector::rules('plural', \[ '/on$/i' \=\> 'ones' // Fixing words ending in 'on' like Cajon, Jamon... \]);

Conclusion

We talk a lot about the ORM, Dependency Injection, and Plugins. Today however, I wanted to say "Gracias" to the humble Inflector. It has saved me from typos and grammar mistakes since 2008. Challenge for today: Go check your code. Are you manually formatting strings? Stop working so hard and let the Inflector do it for you. This article is part of the CakeDC Advent Calendar 2025 (December 18th 2025)

Written by Ajibarra on December 16, 2025

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Uploading Files with CakePHP and Uppy directly to Amazon S3

Uploading Files with CakePHP and Uppy: Direct to S3

Modern web applications increasingly require fast, resilient, and user‑friendly file uploads. Whether it’s profile photos, documents, or large media files, users expect progress indicators, drag‑and‑drop, and reliable uploads even on unstable connections. In this article, we’ll look at how to combine CakePHP on the backend with Uppy on the frontend, and how to upload files directly to Amazon S3 using signed requests.

Why Uppy for Direct S3 Uploads??

Uppy is a modular JavaScript file uploader built by the team behind Transloadit. It provides a polished upload experience out of the box and integrates well with modern backends.

Key advantages

  • Direct-to-Cloud Uploads: File data flows directly from the user's browser to the S3 bucket, without passing through your CakePHP server.
    • Lower Server Load and Cost: Your server only generates a short-lived, secure pre-signed URL. The actual file transfer avoids the “double handling,” drastically reducing your application's bandwidth consumption and infrastructure footprint.
    • Better Performance: By eliminating your application server as a middleman, uploads complete faster. Uppy can also utilize S3's multipart upload capabilities for improved throughput and reliability for large files.
  • Excellent UX: Drag-and-drop support, progress bars, previews, and retry support.
  • Modular Architecture: Only load the necessary plugins.
  • Framework‑agnostic: Works seamlessly with CakePHP.

Architecture Overview

  • This scalable and production-friendly approach uses the following flow:
  • The browser initializes Uppy.
  • CakePHP provides temporary S3 credentials or signed URLs (Authorization).
  • Uppy uploads files directly to S3 (Data Transfer).
  • CakePHP stores metadata (filename, path, size, etc.) if needed (Database Record).

Architecture Overview

This scalable and production-friendly approach uses the following flow:
  1. The browser initializes Uppy
  2. CakePHP provides temporary S3 credentials or signed URLs (Authorization)
  3. Uppy uploads files directly to S3 (Data Transfer).
  4. CakePHP stores metadata (filename, path, size, etc.) if needed (Database Record).

Prerequisites

  • CakePHP 5.x (or 4.x with minor adjustments)
  • AWS account with an S3 bucket
  • AWS SDK for PHP
  • A modern browser to use Uppy's MJS modules

Installing Dependencies

Backend (CakePHP)

Install the required AWS SDK for PHP via Composer: composer require aws/aws-sdk-php Configure your AWS credentials (environment variables recommended): AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-key AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your-secret AWS_REGION=eu-west-1 AWS_BUCKET=your-bucket-name

Frontend (Uppy)

Instead of a build step, we will use Uppy's modular JS files directly from a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which is simpler for many CakePHP applications. We will load the required modules—Uppy, Dashboard, and AwsS3—directly within the <script type="module"> tag in your view.

Creating the CakePHP Endpoint

We need a CakePHP endpoint to securely generate and return the necessary S3 upload parameters (the pre-signed URL) to the browser.

Controller

// src/Controller/UploadsController.php namespace App\Controller; use Aws\S3\S3Client; use Cake\Http\Exception\UnauthorizedException; class UploadsController extends AppController { public function sign() { $this->getRequest()->allowMethod(['post']); // 1. Initialize S3 Client using credentials from environment $s3Client = new S3Client([ 'version' => 'latest', 'region' => env('AWS_REGION'), 'credentials' => [ 'key' => env('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID'), 'secret' => env('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY'), ], ]); // Define a unique path with a placeholder for the actual filename $path = 'uploads/' . uniqid() . '/${filename}'; // 2. Create the command for a PutObject request $command = $s3->getCommand('PutObject', [ 'Bucket' => env('AWS_BUCKET');, 'Key' => $path, 'ACL' => 'private', 'ContentType' => '${contentType}', ]); // 3. Generate the pre-signed URL (valid for 15 minutes) $presignedRequest = $s3->createPresignedRequest($command, '+15 minutes'); $this->set([ 'method' => 'PUT', 'url' => (string)$presignedRequest->getUri(), '_serialize' => ['method', 'url'], ]); } } Add a route: // config/routes.php $routes->post('/uploads/s3-sign', ['controller' => 'Uploads', 'action' => 'sign']);

Frontend: Initializing Uppy and the S3 Plugin

Place the following code in your CakePHP view along with the HTML container for the uploader: <div id="uploader"></div> <script type="module"> // Load Uppy modules directly from CDN (v5.2.1 example) import { Uppy, Dashboard, AwsS3 } from 'https://releases.transloadit.com/uppy/v5.2.1/uppy.min.mjs' const uppy = new Uppy({ autoProceed: false, restrictions: { maxNumberOfFiles: 5, allowedFileTypes: ['image/*', 'application/pdf'], }, }) uppy.use(Dashboard, { inline: true, target: '#uploader', }) // Configure the AwsS3 plugin to fetch parameters from the CakePHP endpoint uppy.use(AwsS3, { async getUploadParameters(file) { const response = await fetch('/uploads/s3-sign', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json', }, }) const data = await response.json() // 2. Return the parameters Uppy needs for the direct upload return { method: data.method, url: data.url, headers: { 'Content-Type': file.type, }, } }, }) uppy.on('complete', (result) => { console.log('Upload complete:', result.successful) }) </script>

Storing File Metadata (Optional but Recommended)

Once the direct S3 upload is successful, you must notify your CakePHP application to save the file's metadata (e.g., the S3 key) in your database. uppy.on('upload-success', (file, response) => { fetch('/files/save', { method: 'POST', headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' }, body: JSON.stringify({ name: file.name, size: file.size, type: file.type, s3_key: response.uploadURL, }), }) })

Security Considerations

Remember to implement robust security checks in your sign controller action:
  • Authenticate users: Ensure the user is logged in and authorized before issuing S3 parameters.
  • Restrict Input: Restrict allowed MIME types and maximum file size.
  • Access Control: Use private S3 buckets and serve files via signed URLs to maintain security.
  • Time Limit: Set short expiration times for the pre-signed requests (e.g., the +15 minutes in the example).

Conclusion

Combining CakePHP and Uppy gives you the best of both worlds: a robust PHP backend and a modern, user‑friendly upload experience. By uploading directly to Amazon S3, you reduce server load, successfully reduce server load, improve scalability, and ensure reliable, fast large file uploads. This setup allows your backend to focus on validation, authorization, and business logic rather than raw data transfer.

Written by Areveron on December 15, 2025

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