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Lately I've been trying to learn ASP.NET. I've gone through the tutorials on the ASP.NET website, but for the most part I'm a complete beginner. I've also been working on creating a personal website, which I've opted to use the CMS Umbraco because it is based on ASP.NET.
Now my questions is not really specific to ASP or Umbraco. It could apply to PHP and Drupal or any other website framework and CMS. I'd like to know when and why a website should be created using an existing CMS technology (Umbraco, Drupal etc..), and when a website should be created from "scratch" using a base web application framework like ASP.NET, PHP, JSP etc..
It depends heavily on the CMS's (module/theme) API, for instance, one Drupal modularity in my opinion is its greatest strength, although learning Drupal itself is not to be taken lightly either. I've seen a lot of commercial sites done in Drupal, most of them look successful, but it made me think what was the total cost of creating the modules, customizing it, etc.
Since you mention you are a newbie in this stuff, do take in account all the stuff to take care of when you are creating a website from the scracth:
Security (XSS prevention, sql injection, blah blah)
Authentication
A flexible theme system (unless you mix html with code... good luck, although there are some really nice template system available for PHP 5)
Database Layer (just use an ORM)
Learning JavaScript, then learn jQuery, MooTools, etc.
Administration panel
Adding stuff like content management
But most importantly, plan something before doing it. Starting out just because you feel like without planning what you want and how will you implement it creates uncertainty, just too many doubts...
So start with a CMS, even for a personal site. There are solutions like Joomla! Drupal, SimpleCMS, some django CMS are also out there. Learn the language of the CMS and start creating your own module as you see fit. Always read their documentation, search in forums before asking, or search here in stackoverflow. Really.. just ask here.. better than googling for a solution :P
You should use a CMS because it's simpler. There are a lot of 'boilerplate' code that you don't need to rewrite. Some CMSes might also contain useful code like user authentication built in. You won't have to roll it your own way, saving time and if you aren't a good programmer, it might also be more secure. Not only that, using a popular CMS means you'll also have a bunch of modules that you can just plug in and use. You can now focus more on the design than the programming in less time.
When should you not use a CMS? If a CMS doesn't provide anything you need or it doesn't allow you to do what you envisioned.
First of all it depends on whether you intend to build a real-world professional website for commercial purpose. If you do, I have to tell you it takes at least 2 years full time self-study to be able to write a web site like that. Web development is not as simple as it's made out to be (Some ppl say you could manage ASP.Net in 3 months-that's due to ignorance). Not only that, it is extremely logically challenging.
So if you only intend to write one professional web site, the best choice would be to pay someone to do it. You only learn ASP.Net when you intend have have a career.
CMS website would be enough for personal website, but maybe not professional enough for "tasteful" commercial websites. Its looks and functions all look the same, maybe good enough for local appliance repairs shop, but not good enough if you want to show your business have "taste", which also implies money
The most important feature of the CMS is its simplicity and the management of data.This is why my big sites like stanford, whitehouse etc have their sites on CMS.Managing the data is not an easy task as it seems.
For me at least it would be better to at least try to create something from scratch I know that they're plenty CMS out there that make things easier but, again ... for me the best way of learning is doing things your self and discover and solve real issues rather than just read about them. if its something for you own and you can afford the developing, troubleshooting testing.. blah blah... do it your self, if its something for a client and you you have a due date I would rather use a CMS or if you want something between a framework such Cake PHP or Codeigniter.
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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.
Preamble
To build dynamic web-sites, we have to master at least four languages:
HTML for the structure of web pages
CSS for layout and design
JavaScript for interactivity
A language for business rules or dynamic driven data
In addition, there's SQL for persistent storage, Memcache for sessions and caching, APIs for the many different content management systems. We should also consider interacting with OpenID, Facebook, Twitter, OpenSocial in building a web application, for it to be interesting.
All in all, it's an utter mess!
If you take into account two objectives:
Teaching web development to kids
Staying productive as a team
Question
What high level systems exist that unify HTML + CSS + Javascript + (Insert High Level Language here, PHP preferred)?
Background
I am a software engineer with 15+ years of experience as project lead and developer with technologies like Broadvision, Autonomy, Enterprise Java, and Oracle.
During recent years, I have focused on the developing community websites, using Drupal or PHP frameworks such as CakePHP. I like web development and enjoy the impedance mismatch between the technologies involved. Still the inevitable conclusion I come to is there must be a better way.
I am the father of two sons (13 and 9), and while I don't want them to become programmers I would like them to comprehend computers as more than gaming machines. I like to motivate them to tinker a bit with web development to express themselves.
Whenever I show them bits and pieces, I would love for them to have a toolset that allows them to create "interesting" results in an hour or two on a Sunday afternoon.
GWT goes someway towards being a high level toolkit, letting you write Java to produce Javascript.
"Links is a new programming language designed to make web programming easier. . . Links eases the impedance mismatch problem by providing a single language for all three tiers. The system generates code for each tier; for instance, translating some code into Javascript for the browser, some into a bytecode for the server, and some into SQL for the database."
At first I wasn't going to post this, since it's a research project, not a production system; but all these answers saying "that's how it is, deal with it" begged for a counterexample.
Web programming is an inherently multi-discipline craft.
The primary reason for this is because of seperation of concerns...the reason that HTML and CSS and JavaScript, SQL, etc, are not mashed together in one language is because they each have seperate goals, caveats, pitfalls, and strengths.
Can you imagine trying to debug a site that has SQL, CSS, JavaScript and PHP code mixed together in the same source files? You may have already had the misfortune of doing so. Sadly, there are literally thousands of sites written like this, and it is a complete nightmare trying to debug or add to such messy amalgamations of presentation, data, and structure.
All in all, an utter mess! How is one
supposed to teach web development to
kids?
I think the most important thing is teaching the fundamentals of programming and making them stick. Variables, logic, pointers, memory management, algorithms, data structures, etc.
When you have the fundamentals of programming, it's easy to work in multipe languages, pick up new ones, and easy to change with the times. This is an invaluable skill for something as constantly-evolving and trend-based as web programming.
In my opinion people new to programming should be started at lower level languages, like C for example. People should be tought the intrinsic, fundamental concepts of programming and should gain knowledge of what is going on behind the scenes before even being shown a higher level language like PHP or Python.
I think that this attitude towards teaching programming will have the effect of breeding better web developers as well as providing a barrier of entry that will weed out people that don't have the interest or intelligence. I think the result of this type of attitude will be better developers, better software, and ultimately more powerful languages and tools.
How is one supposed to teach web development to kids?
An army of kids in web development is what has degraded our profession since now just about anyone calls himself a programmer while it's getting harder and harder for us to get distanced from them and get decent pay.
Many languages and technologies to master? It's a good thing. Let there be some entry barrier to join the ranks of developers.
ADDED: By following comments I can see I have not made myself entirely clear. I say nothing about the age, be it 10, 30, 50 or 80. It's all about attitude. Whether a person understands and accepts the fact that there is much more to the profession than moving controls with a mouse in some designer or CMS. There is a lot of knowledge to be gained, including basics of CS, algorithms, data structures, databases, architecture, extensibility, maintenance, performance, scalability, usability, marketing and much more that belong to the workshop of a professional software developer. I a person is ignorant of those and doesn't make a move to educate themselves and strive to become more and more proficient, they do not belong to the profession. And let this opinion be biased.
The closest I think you'll get is .NET. There are many frameworks for many languages, but none that I know of that handle absolutely everything. Beside that you must not attempt to convince children that programming is a walk in the park. It's a difficult career, that requires a lot of study and keeping-up. We work with technologies that are here today, and gone tomorrow.
If you think about it, programming isn't any different than carpentry, or aeronautics. Just about any profession you chose will require you to learn a lot of different things to be better at what you do.
How are you supposed to teach web development to kids? Wow, that's a thorny one. How does one go about teaching them surgery, or intellectual property law, or civil engineering? Or for that matter auto mechanics, or plumbing, or general contracting?
Have you thought about popping in a Sesame Street tape?
Elmo doesn't like it when you trivialize his profession.
Software industry is suffering from unqualified individuals doing nothing but creating poor quality products and at the same time distancing this profession from becoming a true engineering discipline. This isn't something to get certified on. For the love of god, don't 'teach' anyone software development. Explain to them that making great software only comes out as a result of years of experience and wealth of knowledge of past and current technologies. The worst you can do is introduce yet another half-baked developer creating work for others working with them. Tell them to get educated. I know this isn't the answer you probably wanted to hear, but I wanted this to be read.
I think the problem with web development is that it was not originally designed for what it is used today. We build rich client applications inside a browser with HTML+CSS+JavaScript plus whatever serverside technology generates it. Yes, it works, but it's a pain, especially with those annoying browser incompatibilites. The existence of Flash and Silverlight proves this. They let you build your app with one single technology, still inside the browser. The downsides of needing a plugin for your content is obvious though.
The languages are the least of your worries. It's the problem domain that they work with that is complex. Using different languages actually makes things more manageable because a) It makes the boundaries explicit and b) the languages can be optimised for the domain.
Programming (PHP/JS) and document format (HTML/CSS) are 2 different things.
Learning to program in PHP and JS at the same time will also be difficult.
You should focus on HTML and JS on the client at start. You could then let them program javascript on the server as well. This will make it only one programming language, and focus on HTML over CSS to start with.
Once they've learned the basics of JS and HTML, you can teach them a more widely used server side programming language (like PHP, Ruby, etc) and CSS.
Django can take you part of the way through its cleanness. It is focused around productivity. Teaching is not easier than any other language/framework, but look at it this way: when taught this tool, your students are well equipped in their knowledge of how easy it should be. They will never accept Java servelets or similar nightmares after having learnt Django.
Check out Opa: http://opalang.org/
This is an up and coming web development technology. It looks quite promising. I have done a lot of web development over the past couple years and if I had to make a prediction which up and new framework/language/technology is going to be the primary way websites are developed in ~5-10 years I would say it will be Opa.
The documentation is great, the community is great, the tutorials and responsiveness to questions asked of the team working on the project is excellent. Overall they seem to have an attention to detail in regards to developing this new framework that seems to be unmatched.
Many technologies to master is not a good thing. We need a Visual Basic for the web, no matter what the elitists say.
You need different languages for different purposes. In most web applications there's actually quite a bit going on, so you need the different languages and solutions.
If the goal is to unify on a single language, you can do that. You can use Javascript on the server, and then build the pages using document.createElement() and apply styles to them directly to the styles property. And on the server, store your data directly in files with Javascript.
Obviously this wouldn't work out that well. HTML is not perfect, but there is a reason it is so ubiquitous-- it does what it does simply and well. CSS is both convoluted and too simplistic, but the underlying idea of defining overrideable rules to express your design is sound. And SQL may be a pain to understand at times, but expressing database queries this way is expressive and actually works pretty well.
That being said, I'm not saying there is or should be one architecture. There shouldn't be. Each project should use an architecture in line with its requirements.
On your next project try to simplify: do you really need a database? Can you combine the view layers to simplify, either using something like GWT, Applets, Flash or .NET? Do you really need to serve up your content in a browser (which introduces CSS, HTML and Javascript complexities), or can you just write an application?
I think your approach might need to be rethought. Take this for what it is, my opinion, but I would think this ordering might work better.
Top Priorities: (no particular order)
Develop problem solving skills
Be productive as a team
Next:
Basic Programming skills (PHP, Python, etc)
After they know how to solve problems as individuals and as a team they can move onto specifics such as:
Client/Server model
Markup (HTML, XHTML, XML, etc)
Styling (CSS)
Client-side scripting (JavaScript / jQuery)
Server-side scripting (PHP, Ruby, etc)
Build up their knowledge of what's involved piece by piece rather than jumping into the deep end off the bat - they'll be quickly overwhelmed.
At this point you can start to introduce things like file I/O and databases.
This will give them a fairly comprehensive skill-set. From here they can really start learning.
In addition, one may have to deal with SQL for persistent storage, Memcache for sessions and caching, APIs of content management systems, OpenID, Facebook, Twitter, OpenSocial etc. to build anything interesting.
These are whole topics unto themselves, you can't bite them off all in one chunk. Especially if you're taking these people from 0. Before you can build something interesting you have to learn to build something mundane.
HTML5 will probably be more in the vein of what you're looking rather than Flash or Silverlight but it's not quite here yet...Though support is building.
Baby steps, Olav - if this were The Matrix you could download all that info in one shot but we're not there...yet ;-)
For the moment, and near future, web development is the synergy of many different technologies working together to deliver an interesting user experience.
Well, that's my 2 cents
The multi disciplinary nature of web development is one of the things that makes it a joy to work in, especially in a team environment.
To work well as a team, you naturally come together with a group of people with a range of expertise, from UI/graphics people down to DBAs and sys admins. Even within a single layer of the group (for example back end programmers) each person generally specialises in a different set, for example some people may have more experience up towards UI, others down towards data.
I would take this variety any day, compared to working in a room of 10 java programmers all working on some middleware application.
If you simply want to teach them to write dynamic websites, set them going through the HTML tutorial on w3schools.com and once they're done, find yourself a decent looking stylesheet that they can include and set them going with PHP. That'll get them up and running as a hobby, and if they want to do more, they can start piecing together extra knowledge, like CSS and JavaScript.
Ruby on Rails goes quite a way towards unifying all of those, but for CSS it leaves you out in the cold (though there are probably a few frameworks for RoR that make CSS obsolete, but then you have another markup language, I think), and you still need Javascript (though it does write a lot of Javascript for you, and all DB code).
On the other hand, about your kids: programming is for programmers. On a Sunday afternoon to put something together in a few hours, you would need to know a framework, and buy some plugins, and get everything up and moving without much work. Something like Drupal or Joomla, where they sell templates (for Joomla you can buy packs of hundreds) and plugins to do all kinds of things. And when that fails, your kids should probably know how to go on ODesk and drop $100 to get something done on your framework. Learning to programming is good if you want to be a programmer. Otherwise, it's best to learn what you need to hire good programmers or buy good predone components, and have the cash to do it.
Last point about the kids: let them play video games. That is the best training that they can get for whatever the future holds in store on the computer side. Video games let you investigate, play, and relax with the computer. Once you have that, learning HTML, CSS, Javascript, and some application stack is cake.
angularjs could be an option. it is inteded for single-page-applications and runs on a nodejs-stack and does some template-javascript "magic".
example (template/code):
It binds(via auto-generated-client-side-js) the value from the input-field to the the heading(h1).
If you type something to the input field, the text in the heading gets updated.
And you don't have to write the frontend-js.
<input type="text" ng-model="yourName" placeholder="Enter a name here">
<h1>Hello {{yourName}}!</h1>
Ok, have a bunch of questions that I have been thinking about the past few days. Currently I have a site that is just a bunch of PHP files with MySQL statements mixed in with PHP, HTML and CSS, basically a huge mess. I have been tasked with cleaning up the site and have made for myself, the following requirements:
The site needs to be efficient and well laid out (the source code), I would like to be able to write as little code as possible.
There has to be good separation between structure, presentation and logic.
For whatever reason, I can't use a framework and need to keep the code maintainable and "simple" as there will be future developers working with it.
There needs to be an admin section for at least a few pages.
Saying that, this is what I know about the site as it is now:
Consists of 10-12 pages, a few are completely static, most are dynamically driven via a database and there is a huge form for users to fill out (20-30 fields) that need to be validated and checked.
The hierarchy of the site is basically 5-6 main pages and then sub-pages within those.
So, knowing those things I wanted to know if anyone had any tips/suggestions as to how to go about doing this with the least amount of headaches.
Would an OO approach be best in this situation?
Since there are many static pages and the dynamic pages just need the content filled in would it be best to use some kind of basic template?
EDIT: Thanks for the answers, when I said no frameworks I basically meant anything that would require new syntax other than PHP, as whoever gets hired to work on this site after me will probably only know PHP.
Here's an article about how to organize your PHP project, from Rasmus Lerdorf, the architect who created the language:
http://toys.lerdorf.com/archives/38-The-no-framework-PHP-MVC-framework.html
Despite the popularity of OO frameworks for PHP, Rasmus advocates a less OO approach. He knows more than anyone about PHP intended usage, and how to take advantage of its architecture for high-performance websites.
edit: In response to the comment by #theman, I'll concede the article isn't a fine work of writing, but I think the content is important. Using PHP as it was intended to be used is better than struggling against its weaknesses to make it fit an OO mold.
I highly recommend the Smarty templating engine for all PHP projects. It gives you an easy way to separate the logic from the presentation.
Have a look at this SO question and the answer. It's a pretty good, simple MVC design with some tips on how it can be improved. If you are concerned about maintenance, then at the very least you need to seperate presentation from logic (you need a view and controller). Smarty forces that, but it is a type of framework and you'll have additional syntax to learn.
Before you jump on Rasmus' "no framework php mvc framework" bandwagon, read some of the critical comments. Any web application structure is a framework, and Rasmus' approach isn't the best I've seen.
Hey I have a question regarding the compatibility of ColdFusion and PHP.
We built a community website which is based on ColdFusion. Is it altogether possible to add features such as blogs, and other community features to our website in PHP?
I mean to combine both PHP and ColdFusion together.
Thanks very much for the help!
I think it can be done, if you're using ColdFusion 8. I know that Sean Corfield has a project on RIAForge doing this sort of thing, and there are a string of posts on his blog, starting with this one:
http://corfield.org/blog/index.cfm/do/blog.entry/entry/ColdFusion_8_running_PHP
All of this being said, it will be easier to integrate products from the same core language. There are hundreds of open source options for different things in ColdFusion. RIAForge.org is a good place to start.
Yes, it's possible. You would have to probably integrate the PHP application's session management into your Coldfusion application's session management.
I recently did that with a PHP shopping cart into Coldfusion because I didn't have the time or resources available to get the same results in Coldfusion -- often the great and polished pieces in CF can cost some money, and with PHP its a gamble or a time pit to get it to dance how you want.
Second, there might already be blogs, forums, etc that suit your needs made in Coldfusion. Check them out. You might be able to stay more towards one platform. Chances are you might want a PHP solution because it has addons or something else that you don't want to program.
I like your best-of-breed approach, Coldfusion overall has a lot more commercial development than open source when it comes to large packages that are incredibly featured.
Best of luck, be sure to share what you end up doing.
Your question wasn't really focused enough to give a single direct correct answer.
We built a community website which is
based on ColdFusion. Is it altogether
possible to add features such as
blogs, and other community features to
our website in PHP?
I mean to combine both PHP and
ColdFusion together.
When you say you want to "combine" them, what exactly do you mean? They can both co-exist on a web server and both have access to the same database; so if you want both PHP and ColdFusion applications to have access to the same data, that is not a problem at all. There would be some concerns about locking and race conditions, but from an "is this possible?" standpoint, the answer is undoubtedly YES.
Sharing session, client, or other special scopes/variables from CF to PHP should be possible with some clever programming, but would be tricky. It would depend entirely on your needs and your implementation.
If you're looking for applications to add to your community, I would recommend that you try to find something in CFML that suits your needs before you go the route of attempting to mix CFML and PHP. There are tons of free open source applications including blogs and wikis written in CFML available on RIAForge, and other websites. Canvas Wiki, and Codex Wiki are solutions that focus strictly on Wiki functionality, and there are others that include Wiki functionality as part of a larger package. Searching for "blog" in the ColdFusion category on RIAForge shows no less than 6 blogging applications like BlogCFC and others, and that doesn't even include my personal favorite, Mango Blog.
I think Corfield's way is not (very) suitable for standalone apps like blogs and forums. But it can help with sharing sessions.
On the other hand, these types of software are not so good in CF world.
I'd better proposed to play with webserver settings. Can't say much about IIS, but in Apache you are typically using different handlers for .cfm and .php files. Possible problem here is index file, that can be index.cfm or index.php. In this case .htaccess rules should help.
So, tuning webserver allows to use PHP apps in subdirectories of CF application.
Additional possibility is using subdomains, this even easier to set up, that can fit your needs. Say, blog.website.com and forum.website.com
Hope this helps.
To question owner: sorry for such odd reply, I just can't comment here yet. And sorry for small offtop too.
To Ray Camden: yes I am saying that there're not so good opensource forums/blogs for CF as for PHP. I am happy to know about Galleon and BlogCFC. But if talking about features -- they in 2006 of PHP analogues, especially Galleon. BlogCFC grows and getting better fast.
Anyway, I have a suspicion that many of BlogCFC users using it because it is written in CFML. And me too, partially.
Problem is not these two applications, they can fit someone's needs. Problem is that there're no alternatives. Or maybe I am wrong here and there's lots of another cool apps of these types?
And yes. Maybe there're another amazing proprietary blogs/forums, but we're not talkin about them now right?