Web Design Practices? Mostly HTML or PHP? [closed]

Web Design Practices? Mostly HTML or PHP? [closed] - php

When I go to Facebook or Google or some web-developers custom-made
blog, is that mostly PHP?
First of all, there are numerous development languages and methodologies, and you owe it to yourself to examine at least a few.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_development
This list doesn't account for the fact that companies (like Google) heavily extend existing technologies or roll their own (e.g. Google and Yahoo design their own hardware from scratch, at least in some cases).
Also, what programs are used? Just a text editor with syntax
highlighting?
You can write code in any text editor, but projects quickly benefit from file organization, autocomplete, visual designers (sometimes), code refactoring tools, test coverage tools, etc. etc.
What I want to know is how professional web-developers structure their
sites. Mainly HTML with some php includes and things here and there,
or mainly or even completely PHP?
This question is independent of PHP. In brief, logic should be separated from presentation and shared functionality should be reused. The MVC pattern is very popular for achieving this.
Speaking of mainstream sites, it's my opinion (based on a few facts) that MySpace lost a great deal of market share due to not having a properly abstracted architecture that supported rapid deployment of new features and high performance.
I have no idea where to go from here. I knew there were a lot of
options and structures, but I was hoping for an example or some
starting point.
There is no one "correct" starting point, but if you like PHP and you are starting to recognize some of the right/wrong ways to do things, you are headed in the right direction. Look for a better editor if needed. Read a few articles on basic design patterns and best practices; they are all over the web.
If you want to branch out a little, download the free version of Visual Studio 2010 and try a .NET MVC web project. You can literally install, create a new project, and click the "Play" button to run.

What you are asking is how to separate content from logic, which is the tip of the iceberg of the larger question of scope when it comes to web page/web app development. One problem with coming up with a "best practice" or generally-approved model is that what might be the best design might not actually work in every browser or work on a mobile device, etc. But one thing to research is the idea of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_logic, which aims to separate the aspects of a site/page into various scopes or layers.
I'm not an expert on the topic, but the general idea is to have a Data Layer (from the db), a Logic Layer (your php/web server logic), and a presentation layer (your html). To prevent too much overlap between the logic and presentation layer, many designers adopt an html template system, like Smarty, so that you can have your static HTML page marked up with the dynamic parts (user name, data table values, etc), and the PHP assigns those values to the template variables to be filled in.
Another aspect of this topic is the separation of your presentation layer itself. This generally breaks down into : Document layer (the actual HTML body), Presentation Layer (the look of the document, handled by CSS), and the Interactive layer (anything that should happen while the user is viewing the page, handled by javascript). These get pretty tangled into each other as well, but keeping them as cleanly separated as possible greatly helps your initial issue, as it helps prevent writing PHP that writes HTML that handles all three aspects. Instead, your PHP might only write the document, and the CSS and JS handles everything else once it loads.

What I want to know is how professional web-developers structure pick the technologies for their sites.
Companies use whatever they like, there is no such thing as best language for the web. They pick the technologies that suit their problem set and resources. There is not only PHP, there is ASP.NET, JavaServer Faces for example, and a lot more.
With HTML5 and Javascript libraries like jQuery, KnockoutJS or Dojo Toolkit for example, you can build awesome dynamic websites. I think that is somewhere to start learning, and also use an editor like Notepad++. Note that with a text editor you force yourself to look at the code so you practice it and understand it; I would not prefer the Dreamweaver way. Also, you can challange yourself to make your sites valid against W3C, and by doing so you will increase the quality of your site and code.
As you get more comfortable, you can proceed with PHP and/or the framework based on your preferred language, like CodeIgniter for PHP, which is great for learning MVC. It is a long journey to become an experienced web developer, so take your time. You will have your own best practises and preferences, and with time you will find out how you can do better.
If it's at all possible, I would love to see some of the source files
of the developers reading this.
As for coding styles, you can seek through existing questions, I think there are some for every language.

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Benefits of PHP frameworks [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.
I have heard a lot about PHP frameworks like ZEND, CodeIgniter,CakePhp etc and i am also well aware of some advantages of using it i.e. increased productivity,reduced errors etc but doesn't php framework make coding a complex process ? Doesn't coding without framework provides more flexibility ? Some people say you don't need any additional framework, as PHP is itself a framework.
So why there is so much usage of PHP framework ? Are frameworks really necessary in PHP?

This is a broad question and I think an important one. I am in the camp of NOT using frameworks unless absolutely necessary. The question is, when is it necessary?
First off, the thing that I think gave me this strange, allergic reaction to frameworks is that inexperienced coders want to use them for EVERYTHING, even tiny sites.... and it's bizarre. Maybe its through some need to make their resumes bigger by saying they've used codeigniter- but in my experience that doesn't make a damn bit of a difference. Hiring managers want SKILLSETS, not somebody that can read API documentation- which anyone can do. If you have working knowledge about program architecture and OOP principles, you're hired. If you don't, but you're a codeigniter ninja, .... eeehhhh.... ok?
Frameworks have their uses but I think when your mom wants to make a website for her bake sale then you can just slap a page together using a much lighter weight system. I don't sit in the camp of belief that you should include code "in case you need it". Over time, I have developed my own framework that is absolutely tiny, which is why every single web site or application I have ever built has ranked in the top 2% (though usually top 1%) of page load times in the world by google.
This is not to say they are bad- just don't go running off to use a framework because you want to put it on your resume- you're actually shooting yourself in the foot in the long run. Why? Because you won't spend time using the language itself, you'll spend time using the language of the framework. Take jQuery for instance- I avoided it for YEARS because it wasn't JAVASCRIPT. People scoffed at it- but now, when I go to a technical interview and I get asked (inevitably): "What is your experience level with jQuery", and I say "not much", and they for a second look surprised, but then I follow it up with "but I just wrote dependency injection via inversion of control in native JS yesterday"- I get hired ON THE SPOT.
Frameworks are great. Just ask yourself if you really need them. Particularly the question is: are the benefits of coding it yourself outweighed by the time benefits (don't forget about the learning curve of the platform) of the framework or not? On the one hand (non-framework approach), you learn a lot, and perhaps you take more time because you're working out your own kinks- but you learned a ton about the language itself (PHP in this case). On the other hand, you learned a new framework and maybe got a site up quicker that most likely is slower.
Wordpress is a great example of an overused framework in my opinion. Back in my freelancing days I used to take on gigs that needed me to "revamp a wordpress site"- only to find a site that could barely load because somebody plugged in every plugin they could find and made what was a stupid simple site into a tank with ungreased treads. It's OVERKILL in that case.
With my experience in CTO and Tech Lead positions, when somebody puts Wordpress and jQuery as primary points on their resume, to me that says "I don't know a thing about OOP and how to use these languages if required" which, in the real world (and I work on huge projects like windows 8 and other projects of that magnitude) - is OFTEN the case. Microsoft expressly forbids the usage of jQuery in their metro app system for MS released products because they want to show off their system dependency free.
Other companies, however, DO use frameworks. I just got off a project using Foundation and it was AWESOME- but that's because the architect of the project fully researched the framework and we used it RIGHT. The result was a fully responsive pristine code base that went from full monitor glory down to triscuit-sized smartphone screen awesomeness.
IN SHORT:
Frameworks, when used right, can be awesome- particularly for large projects (and I'm talking enterprise large). For smaller projects they aren't necessarily bad- but when they are used without thinking about their implementations, its like using a hatchet for a scalpel.
Just my 2 cents.

Doesn't php framework make coding a complex process?
It depends what you want to do. If all you're doing is creating a basic contact form for a site that is all static HTML, then yes using a framework would make it a more complex process. On the other hand if you're building a large scale app then using a framework would not necessarily make it more complex.
Doesn't coding without framework provides more flexibility ?
This depends on the framework itself, they aren't all the same. Some frameworks such as Slim or Codeigniter are very trimmed down and don't get in the way too much and so don't really impact on flexibility, some are more complex such as Symfony2/Zend.
Some people say you don't need any additional framework, as PHP is itself a framework.
They are right, you technically don't need a framework, you can do anything with plain PHP that you can do with a framework. Frameworks have really evolved from developers personal archives of functions and helper code. PHP can be relatively low level in that it doesn't have a ready made function to do everything you need. Before frameworks, developers tended to have their own set of helper code that would be reused on many projects. Frameworks are still essentially that, except they are collaborative projects that hundreds or thousands of developers contribute to.
One other benefit of frameworks is if you have several developers, and one has developed an application and you want another developer to contribute to it or take over it, then if the developer is familiar with the framework that was used he can get up to speed on the app much quicker than if it was written in plain PHP. Without the framework, the new developer would have to decipher the previous developers system before they even start to look at adding any new functionality.

Are they necessary in PHP?
No they are not, sure it is possible to code anything without frameworks. But it's more work, this is like: Why am I using C when I can do all the same by writing assembler?
So why there is so much usage of PHP framework?
The benefits of using frameworks is, that you can use many predefined things. For example, in most PHP frameworks you can use MVC Pattern. Sure you could also build your own MVC structure with flat PHP, but that is like re-inventing the wheel everytime again. Only thing is, if you have very specific requirements, you may can/should not use a framework, but in most cases the requirements are not that specific.
The point with MVC is only one of a lot benefits. Depending on the framework you want to use, there are specific benefits.
So, it is just like you said. By using a framework you can save time, because you don't have to re-invent everything that already exists.
You can see a framwork as a tool, that helps you to develop better and faster.
Edit: Like Ayesh K mentioned in his comment, it is also a benefits, that a framework is developed by many experts, so it normally is better code, following the principle: 'Four eyes see more than two'.

CMS or not for my website? [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
I am building a website, newfutureuniversity.org, and I'm not sure if I should rebuild it under a CMS or not. I can do procedural PHP but not OOP PHP (I could learn it if needed though). I have been struggling with this problem for some time so I decided to ask it here.
My page right now works this way: Every page has an include at the beginning and at the end, and each of them calls other includes. For example, the one on the beginning calls the 'translation.php', 'login.php', 'menu.php', etc.
Requirements
Code management. I'm currently using AjaXplorer. It's great, very complete and the little it cannot do the tools my host ( 000webhost ) provides suffice. The other good side is that it allows multiple users with different permissions. I need this functionality to remain.
Blog. I am using Chyrp for blogging since it's lightweight and accomplish my objectives for the blog bit.
Users. Not using any engine, just build my own in old plain PHP. Users can register, log in etc.
Languages. Also built my own. It allows me to translate every bit of information.
Wiki. Or similar. I need (not done yet) a highly personalized wiki engine for the files in the page. I am not sure yet if finding some lightweight one and personalize it or doing one myself. Also, I should include CKeditor in the wiki engine.
Some more future features that I still have to think about.
As you can see, I need a 'base' and different types of engines running at the same time on different directories.
Problems
If there were no problems I wouldn't be writing this question. These are the main problems I find:
Centralized user. The most important problem. Because I'm mixing different engines, each one uses (and even worse if I include the wiki) different user tables. I want a visitor to only need to register once, and then to be able to surf through the wiki, the blog, submit files or to do anything else with the same user name.
Centralized programmer. Same as the user but with the programmers I plan to add to the project. Also it should work with the permissions. Not needed, but much better if possible.
Style. Instead of having to manually change the engines, to have the same style by default to every one. This is probably not possible but also not really important (nor needed), just time consuming.
Therefore, these engines must be built on the same 'base' (CMS), not individually run on different directories. I was thinking about switching to Drupal for the enormous support out there or Joomla for being 'more' customizable, based in what I have read online.
Question
Will these 2 CMS (or any other you propose) keep all the requirements and solve the problems? Or are CMS modules (wiki one, blog one, etc) still build to be standalone? meaning that each one will build a different user table structure. Are there any other advantages from using a CMS?
Ideally the CMS itself would build the user tables and then the modules access them instead of creating their own. I have never worked with a CMS so I would need to learn about them but that's not a problem if it works.

If I were you, I would invest time in learning how to use frameworks, zend, code igniter, yii, etc. A CMS just ties your hands in terms of new layout features or simple functionality improvements.
Definitely go for PHP/OOP. You will find a lot of easy solutions to many problems you come across when using CMS, also you will improve your programming skills, which is the most important thing of all, right?

CMS is NOT a framework. A CMS allows users/admins who don't have knowledge of php, html, css or any other language you might be using to change the content of your site. In some way, it should not restrict your coding. In other words, a CMS can be part of a framework, or your home-fabric piece of code. I see a response which starts with "When I was using CMS..". When you are making your site interactive in some sort, it is a CMS. You are managing the contents of your site with a form that puts some text into a database. Just like the textarea I am typing in now, I am a user that uses the CMS of stackExchange, but I'm just having less rights than the admin. But I am again using the CMS. But stackexchange is building his sites in a framework of some sort, so you can be using a framework AND implement the CMS functionality.
Also, try to understand OOP, it's hard to get into, but when you get the hang of it, it is great to use. It simplifies your code a lot. I learned it through Flash (ActionScript 3.0). I find it easier to understand the basics of OOP over there because you have direct visual output of what you are doing. It's easier than PHP-OOP since PHP and OOP aren't actually fitting together. It is a OOP look-a-like (which gets better and better every time). So try to learn OOP first.
So as a conclusion you might think that I will say build your own CMS functionality in a framework of your choice. But it's kinda hard to get into a framework AND OOP from scratch. So maybe you should build a few trial-and-error websites with very simple functionality to learn OOP and Frameworks. I am learning CakePHP as we speak and learned OOP a couple of years ago. It's kinda hard. So do it step-by-step and think about what you are trying to accomplish and what you need for that. I think this topic is a very good start.
Just for the record, every programmer who is smart, and I think you are, is using the OOP method, since you don't have to rewrite pieces of code, or have to copy-paste. When your code is good, you will have no repeating code anywhere. Which is nice when you run into a bug on 200 pages of the site and knowing you only have to change one file instead of 200. :)

What to do after learning basic PHP? [closed]

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I have learned extremely basic PHP (I think so) using Lynda Tutorial. After that, I feel, I got some grip on that language. My ambition is to become a web developer! After some googling, I planned to learn some more advanced and practical php by using websites like PHPSCripts, Webapps etc..
But, now I'm in a confusion! After my studies, when I seek for a web developer position & got selected, how will I work, by just knowing some language basics?
Can you guys help me to become a good web developer, what will I have to learn & how to learn?
Also, can I get the steps to do a practical PHP project.

As a web developer it is important to have client and server side skills. But there are few web developers which are excellent at both... But knowing the basics and where to look for info is definitely a good starting point.
I would recommend to work through the following list(s) in the order presented. If you feel comfortable with a topic, move one. Even though that in reality you will often have to go back and forth during the learning process...
Client Side
HTML / XHTML
CSS
a JavaScript Library (e.g. jQuery, prototype/scriptaculos, etc.)
Server Side - Infrastructure
familiarize yourself with shell scripting if working on Linux (e.g. bash, etc.)
Webserver (e.g. Apache)
PHP Server
Databases (e.g. MySQL, PosgreSQL, etc.)
Server Side - Programming
PHP
SQL
Advanced Topics
After getting familiar with the basics...
AJAX (this is placed here because it is a client/server topic, not because it is advanced...)
Object Oriented Programming (OOP)
Security issues
Source Control Management (SCM) -> (e.g. git, etc.)
Model View Controller (MVC) software architecture
PHP Frameworks (Zend Framework, Symphony, CakePHP, Agavi)
Unit Testing (e.g. PHPUnit)
Object Relational Mapper (ORM) for PHP (doctrine, Propel)
Usually this keeps you busy for a while. At least it kept and still keeps me busy... ;)

Here are few suggestions:
Read these advanced/practical php articles on phpro.org
Learn the basics of OOP
Familiarize yourself with php frameworks and CMS
Familiarize yourself with HTML/CSS/Javascript
Try to make clones of other websites
Try to volunteer in open source projects, you may get started at:
openhatch
sourceforge

Im my opinion, A good webdeveloper MUST know:
HTML
CSS
JavaScript
After this, it's important to know:
Jquery
XHTML
Crossbrowsing (diferences of IE X Firefox x Chrome, etc)
Rationale:
HTML: it's the base of web.
CSS: in 2010, it's the base of web.
JavaScript: only the basic, to understand jquery after.
Jquery: you can solve a lot of problems quickly and it's large used.
XHTML: because your page may broke in modern browsers, if has a <br>, not a <br/>
Crossbrowsing: there is more than one browser in the world.

Just keep on practising. You will likely need solid HTML / CSS skills as well as PHP since the two go hand-in-hand - it's also useful to learn MySQL. Spend lots of time going through the tutorials on the excellent tizag.com as well as Lynda.
Once you're comfortable with all that and you're ready to move onto something more advanced, it's worth looking into Wordpress customisations and plugin development - that has the advantage of being pretty easy to use, with an awesome support community, and a whole bunch of mature code that you can look through yourself to get more familiar with how the language is used in the real world.
After that, try a framework like CodeIgniter or CakePHP - these are awesome for your productivity but do make sure you're comfortable with the basics first as the learning curve can be pretty steep and you want to reduce frustration as much as you can. :-) Learning design patterns will also be helpful at this stage.
One thing that will always be important to you, your users, your applications, and your potential employers is code security. I can't stress this enough. As soon as you put an application into real-world use, you have a moral and professional obligation to make that application secure. http://www.addedbytes.com/writing-secure-php/ <- read, digest, read other guides. Security is the single most important thing that a PHP developer can learn.
Above all, have fun! The best developers tend to be the ones that get genuine enjoyment out of what they're doing. You might find yourself eventually leaning in a different direction and using completely different technologies, so always keep your eyes open and be prepared to learn new things even if they don't necessarily 'fit' your current skillset. Also the more general knowledge you have about programming patterns, the better you will become in individual languages. Remember that it's an organic process so you will need to let it develop naturally - but help it along by exposing yourself to as much as possible (foreign language teachers call this 'immersion' :-) )

Regarding PHP
Make a small project using PHP, so you know that you know.
Learn a (MVC) framework like CakePHP or Agavi.
Read this SO answer.
Regarding Web Development in General
Know about CSS, XML, XHTML, XSLT, W3C validation, HTML5, JavaScript, AJAX (and most other acronyms you come across).
You will find there are various libraries which make your life easy, use them. And there will be one browser that will make your life difficult, but you will have do deal with it.

A solid web developer needs an understanding of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the server-side scripting language of her choice. But still more important is a solid foundation in programming. You don't have to be an expert computer scientist, but you need to understand how to structure a program and how to solve problems in a sensible way.
Most professional web development involves database access of some sort. Teach yourself SQL, and use a real SQL -- not Access -- for the effort. You can run MySQL or Postgres on a laptop these days, and it's free.
Learn to design databases well. Learn about normal forms, and indexes, and so forth. The time you spend on that will pay off in spades.
Take a while to study up on security. Look at the security bugs that have afflicted high-profile projects and sites. (Hint: they're pretty much mostly about trusting untrustworthy data, or else relying on old out-of-date infrastructure, but the consequences include site defacement and the compromise of valuable information.)
And then, take on a charity project somewhere. You won't get turned down, and you'll cut your teeth, so to speak. Just make sure you're not storing social security numbers or something crazy like that, because charity workers are often vulnerable to social engineering attacks.

the very very first thig to do is to learn Object Orientated Programming (if you haven't).. then you might want to start learning the MVC pattern... and then you must decide either you star using frameworks (like cakePHP, Symphony,Zend) or you prefer using CMS (like joomla or wordpress)... on the process you might also want to learn javascript using a framework (mootools, jquery or prototype)...
Edited: i forgot about databases and sql!! wow.. there's a lot to learn!

The only way to become a good programmer on a certain platform, is to study something more than just tutorials. Read a book, at least. Then the rest comes with practice.
A good way is to also learn a specific platform (depending on what they work with). Some work with Wordpress, so once you know basic PHP and how to use it with databases, and how to work with databases, you would be able to quickly make some basic information websites. Others use Joomla, Drupal, DLE, to quickly build websites, without having to hurt their heads with full backend and frontend architecture. If you need a more general approach, to be able to make more specific web applications, use frameworks like Zend, CakePHP, Symfony, CodeIgniter.
Also, besides knowledge of PHP, to build a small website by yourself, you will also need to know HTML, JavaScript (with AJAX, possibly a framework like jQuery), SQL.
And last but not least, you will need to learn how to protect the site against XSS, SQL Injection and other security threats.

Learn Object Orientated Programming (OOP for short).

Watching any programming tutorial is different than watching any movie. You need to have practice and have experiments form different angle of codes. Prentice and research is only way to get into the deep of any language. If you think you have well understanding about php then try to make some small application like phonebook which have database connection. After that you can move for any frame work like laravel, cakephp. But I always recommend to do at least one small project with raw php before move for any framework because when you come from raw php you will start loving working with frameworks otherwise you will may feel boring to learn again something new as my point of view.

Which web technology to learn for an experienced C++ developer? [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.
Friends,
I've got some exp in c++ and now kind of starting my way to J2EE (to survive:))). Meanwhile, I've got a plan to venture in to a web portal my own. But with very little experience in web technology, I'd need to start from scratch. I'm little confused on which way to go and I'm here.
PHP, Python or JSP, considering the fact that, anyway I've got to learn J2EE at my work.
Would that be worth to learn PHP or Python to develop a portal which I expect to get 80-100K
hits per day "IF" everything goes well OR jsp would be sufficient?
Many thanks

Before learning either of these, spend some real time and learn HTML and CSS in depth. Also learn Javascript and JQuery (or your favorite client side library). The O'Reilly books on the topic are pretty much all good IMO.
I say that because I think that you'll find that for most modern web sites, a lot of richness is moving to the client side, and away from the server side. Under this model, your code in PHP or JSP is probably going to look pretty similar (ie, fetch data from the database and serve it to your view or into JSON for the client to consume).

Considering you're used to c++, should look at aspx and c# - probably closer to your current experience.
That said, PHP is a doddle, so it shouldn't present any challenges. Bear in mind that if you want to get the most from the language, you absolutely have to learn a little bit about configuring apache, and frameworks (cake, codeigniter, zend etc).

All the server-side technologies you list are "sufficient" for the volume of traffic you expect, if you design the site well from a performance and scaling viewpoint -- and so do many others you haven't mentioned, such as other Java-based approaches, C# ones, and (last but not least) Ruby (probably with Rails, though, like the other languages, it has several frameworks for you to choose from).
As most everybody said, the client-side considerations are sharper -- unless you want to try a "server-side generator of client-side code" like gwt (I'm told the latter works well, but personally I'm always wary of code generators, esp. using a code generator w/o understanding of the "code" it makes for you, which in this case is HTML, CSS, and Javascript with its own framework). Except for GWT and similar approaches (if that's your chosen poison), really learning HTML, CSS and Javascript is really a must -- and then you get to choose among many, many frameworks again (jQuery, Dojo, closure, etc, etc).
For performance issues, you really want to study Steve Souders' site (and books, etc) -- Steve was a server-side guru until measurement showed him the bottleneck was really client-side, and then he turned himself into the client-side performance wizard;-). But to get the most out of the books you'll need understanding of HTTP, HTML, etc, etc, to start with;-).

Hit's per day isn't a really useful metric for estimating performance. You really need to be concerned with the peak load and the acceptable response time.
80-100k hits per day is an average of about 1 hit per second. The hits are not going to be evenly spread out, so for normal traffic you might expect a peak load of 10 hits per second.
If you are going to promote the site with newsletters or commercials, expect to peack at 100's of hits per second.
If you selling $1 air tickets, expect to peak at 1000's of hits per second.
Now the language you choose for the site isn't nearly as important as your choice of database (not necessarily relational) and the way you store the data in the database.
Scaling up frontends is relatively easy, so having really fast efficient HTML generation shouldn't be a primary concern. Pick a platform that is going to be efficient for development time.

I expect this question to be closed as being subjective. But, I'll put in my 2 cents.
JSP would likely dovetail well with J2EE. (I've heard that it can be a bit rigid, but I have no experience to provide any insight on the matter.)
PHP is a good candidate, because it's popular. You can find a lot of info on the web.
Python isn't as popular for webdev, so finding examples won't be as easy.
I also second Dave Markle's opinion. If you want to learn webdev, HTML, CSS and JavaScript will be crucial as well. You may never want to be a front-end developer, but you can't get away from dealing with those technologies at some point.

There are many options.
Since you already know (and is learning about) Java, one option is to use GWT for both server and client. This can help you in that you do not need to learn another language (JS/HTML/Python/PHP etc). If your portal is going to be big, using Java can help you organise the application better - usually JS/HTML based applications are not very suitable for proper organisation, even if you use good JS Libraries like jQuery or YUI. Having a good organisation can help a lot - during updation and modification later.
If your planned venture is a single/two person venture or if it is time bound - where time to market is everything - then I would not suggest the earlier approach - especially if your server side part is expected to be big.
Java is a slow language to write code in. A project which you will take say 6 months to write in Python will take you close to 1 year + in Java. In such a scneario, I would prefer Python - it is a proper language - unlike PHP, and you create code with good organisation there too - albeit a little less organised than using Java.
Please note that if your client side code is much more complex than your server side code, then going with GWT will do you no harm. But if your server side code is very complex compared to the client side, then I would suggest Python.
Another point is to use existing Web Frameworks to ease your work. For Python, Django is an excellent choice. This itself will decrease your work time by 50% or more, while making your code much more secure and scalable.

It really isn't that similar to C++, but I would recommend PHP. You really can't expect a server-side scripting language to be similar to a compiled language like C++. Personally, I find PHP to be an ugly, messy looking language, but once you get into it, it's very rewarding. Other languages have too many drawbacks. ASP.Net is too Microsoft-centric, Python and Ruby on Rails are too obscure, and are also non-curly bracket languages, meaning it will require a lot of adjustment to change to them. Hope this helps.

Which PHP framework should I use when creating this type of website/application? [closed]

I rolled my own framework based on http://kissmvc.com/. It allows you to basically do what you need in PHP but gives you an easy MVC framework to do it in. You don't have to learn the specific syntax to Zend, Cake, Code Ingiter or Kohana, all of which I played with before I found kissmvc. Based on a blog post by Rasmus, it was all the direction I needed and I love what I have now for reasons #animuson mentioned.
Rasmus' post: http://toys.lerdorf.com/archives/38-The-no-framework-PHP-MVC-framework.html

From what you write, I would say all "big, famous" frameworks will be able to do this fairly "easy"... So You should really define a few prototype tasks and check out a few of the frameworks. You should be able to solve this using, CakePHP, Symfony, CodeIgniter, Yii, Zend, or any other framework, so it is better to do some real testing.
You might look for a framework that has a tight integration to jquery, but this should not be a showstopper, since you should be able to implement this in almost any framework.
You might also consider footprint and execution time, and find a framework that performes well and is not too cpu heavy (read Yii or CodeIgniter for instance).
Good luck in the search

Ultimately if you want it to fit your needs you need to build your own framework, otherwise there will always be limitations. Keep in mind that there is no framework that you can simply install and tell it to do these things, you are going to need programming knowledge of how the framework works in its entirety and how to program your custom pages to work with those features. I found it easier to just build my own framework. That way I always knew exactly what everything did and if I needed something additional, I could easily add it in the correct spot without doing much thinking on it.
A framework is only the base materials and functions you need. If you're looking for something like a pre-built website such as PHP-Nuke or a forum system, you're looking for a content management system, not a framework. A framework generally comes with absolutely no pre-built pages. Might I add that some content management systems do come with their own framework and some use existing frameworks from elsewhere.

So, we basically need a framework that's easy to understand and get up and running.
well as far as the above statement is concerned you may want to have a look at cakePHP framework.
You will easily find help on cakephp framework on stackoverflow and cakephp google group. Response will be quite fast on both the sites.
You will need to go deeply through the documentation of every framework that you plan to use because with a functionality that you are planning to built would require you to study the framework quite well.
With cakephp you will be able to create CRUD (create, update, delete) operations quite easily with less effort, but for further functionalities you will have to study it's documentation and keep your cool while you learn it :-)

I have always found plain php to be all the framework I need.
PHP itself has all the features provided by the other frameworks
A superb templating engine, database access, parsing, and control logic.
The great thing is all these features implemented in a single unified component called "php".
The main problem is you need discipline to separate presentation, navigation, busines logic and database/persistence handling. You can have sql statements mixed in with your html, you can emit html directly from an sql statement in fact you have complete freedom to implement all the known anti-patterns and invent some of your own.
The "Java" and "Perl" frameworks generally provide things like request handling, template handling etc. which are missing from the basic language, but, these features are built into php. Most of what the "php" based frameworks do is force you into (a very sensible) MVC design pattern and save you a tiny bit of coding.

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PHP, A popular general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited to web development.