What is the advantage of PHP websites?

[xflow]

Originally Posted by TIGGER

Sorry to bump this back to the top, but I use two programmers for my work, one uses PHP and one uses ASP.

I find that the ASP programmer is actually more efficient and produces work that is less prone to errors across all platforms. From what I understand, ASP is more globally supported... is this true?

So other than ease of use (which isnt a concern as my asp programmer knows his shit), why should we use PHP over ASP?

Depends on who you talk to I guess. ASP tends to be used on Windows platforms and PHP tends to be used on UNIX / Linux platforms.

We tend to code in PHP more than ASP as we prefer the stability of UNIX or Windows servers.

I'd say your ASP productivity was only better because your ASP programmer is better at ASP than your PHP programmer is with PHP if that makes sense.

I have a PHP coder that can run circles around any ASP coder I have or have had. Much quicker, better work ethic, less prone to errors etc.

If you have a really good ASP coder then stick with it, better that than switching to PHP with and avreage coder. If you can find a shit hot PHP coder I'd be using PHP myself. We have done at least 50 full on projects using both and always find the PHP projects are easier to work on, more stable, easy to maintain and cheaper to deploy (as a bulk of the base software is freeware).

Also prefer mysql over Microsoft SQL and I really hate paying license fee's to Microsoft for having to use a pretty average database platform in the first place

[TIGGER]

Fair enough, i think my asp programmer is a lot better than my php guy so i'll stick with it.

The dilemma i'm facing is that many of my clients are already being hosted on linux servers, so in some cases to use asp(which we prefer) we have to pay extra $$$ for a windows server.

Maybe it's time i employed a better php coder.

[xflow]

Originally Posted by TIGGER

Fair enough, i think my asp programmer is a lot better than my php guy so i'll stick with it.

The dilemma i'm facing is that many of my clients are already being hosted on linux servers, so in some cases to use asp(which we prefer) we have to pay extra $$$ for a windows server.

Maybe it's time i employed a better php coder.

I'd say so.

Not too mention the SQL license fee etc.

If you have a good PHP coder, you can then service both platforms.

Shame ASP is crap on Linux, PHP on windows once set up is no dramas, we just did a couple of PHP builds on a windows server.

[Steve F]

I've recently taken over the SJC site (PHPNuke) from Chrispy and in all honesty it's pretty basic once you sit and muck about with it for a few hours and if you have a SQL and Unix background.

I'm even planning a couple of modules. One will link into the calendar so it will show the weather at the location of the trip (as long as a valid location is setup correctly in the calendar) using some code available from Weatherzone.com.au and a bit written around it by me.

In saying that I'm still geting my head around the code but am finally geting the hang of it

Cheers
Steve

[monster]

Another vote for PHP from me! If you're at all concerned about running on OS's other than Windows (and you should be if you're talking about server software) then you should be using PHP.

Just be a bit careful about licensing. I hate to be picky but strictly speaking PHP isn't freeware. However, it does have a very liberal license. MySQL is GPL'd, which is slightly more restrictive; if you write an application built on top of MySQL then your software also has to be GPL, or you have to buy a commercial license.

PHP can also interface to a load of other databases, not just MySQL; I know it can interface to Oracle, and it can probably talk to SQL Server too if it really has to, as well as others.

Things like phpNuke and PostNuke are content management systems (CMSs) built using PHP. You can easily use them to build and administer your site without actually getting your hands dirty on any PHP code at all. How such sites look is entirely down to how much you customise them, a lot of which can also be done without touching the PHP code at all. It's just that a lot of sites which use such CMS software simply use the default themes and a lot of other sites are so heavily customised that you don't realise they're using a common CMS!

Personally I've been using Xoops (http://www.xoops.org/) for quite some time now after trying phpNuke, PostNuke and Mambo, and it's great!

[xflow]

MJOC (mjoc.org.au) is running a mambo backend, not that you would know it.

[BlackCat]

This is an interesting debate because I am currently the project manager for a major website re-design (I'm a creative type not a programmer). Our current website runs a mixture of ASP.NET (for the Content management) and PHP for the forum. The two have been integrated in the present system. In the new system we intend to separate them and now I have a problem - finding a programmer who knows enough about PHP, MySQL and vBulletin to work with the ASP.NET guys. There is no forum software running under ASP.NET that comes close to vBulletin - or at least not that I have found.