Joomla Site VS Custom Coded Site - Please advise

[FarligOpptreden]

For an easy to use CMS try www.easycmslite.com. We can work with your graphic designer to integrate a custom template for you into this CMS.

There is no shopping cart module, but that is in the pipelines. Probably will be ready towards the end of July and will integrate with netcash and paypal out of the box.

John

Try catering for script injections in your HTML editor...

 

[jonno_081]

Try catering for script injections in your HTML editor...

Are you the time warp dude? (PS, I'm not being rude here. If you are, you'll know what I'm talking about).

Ja, I was thinking about that, but then again, this is an editor. If you really want a script that pops up messages, its on your own site, who am I to determine that you can't have it?

Its always a difficult thing to decide, user freedom vs allowing them to do silly things.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on that, either here or via PM if you don't want to clog up this thread.

 

[SilverNodashi]

Agreed. I'm not debating which CMS is better here, I just commented on the fact that PHP fans here rebuke .NET exclaiming how terrible it is, when it fact it is immensely powerful for large-scale applications.

You say this in a way that maked PHP look slightly better than HTML 2. I have worked on both PHP & ASP for many years and they are equaly powerful and pretty much do the same, in different ways.

The big reason more people go with PHP is costs. And it's simple, really, to figure this one out. For anyone, who hasn't developed before it would cost far more to learn ASP than Linux. You need a Windows server licence (unless you pirate), and a pretty decent Windows IDE which also cost a lot of money. Linux is free, and many of excellent Linux IDE's are free as well.

 

[FarligOpptreden]

Are you the time warp dude? (PS, I'm not being rude here. If you are, you'll know what I'm talking about).

Ja, I was thinking about that, but then again, this is an editor. If you really want a script that pops up messages, its on your own site, who am I to determine that you can't have it?

Its always a difficult thing to decide, user freedom vs allowing them to do silly things.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on that, either here or via PM if you don't want to clog up this thread.

Haha! Yeah, I might just be that dude... I just think it might be wise to disallow scripting from a page-editing level. Try and incorporate an "events" section for certain elements or page actions... Just a thought? Agree on not derailing this thread further, so that's me for now!

 

[FarligOpptreden]

You say this in a way that maked PHP look slightly better than HTML 2. I have worked on both PHP & ASP for many years and they are equaly powerful and pretty much do the same, in different ways.

The big reason more people go with PHP is costs. And it's simple, really, to figure this one out. For anyone, who hasn't developed before it would cost far more to learn ASP than Linux. You need a Windows server licence (unless you pirate), and a pretty decent Windows IDE which also cost a lot of money. Linux is free, and many of excellent Linux IDE's are free as well.

The thing is, most developers (I'd go out on a limb and say 80%) already have a decent box running a higher-than-Home-spec Windows license running. Visual Web Developer (VWD) is free, as well as SQL Server Express Edition (SSEE). VWD and SSEE both have powerful editors built in. Most people reckon that Visual Studio (on which VWD) is one of the best IDEs around today... Again, my comment wasn't on ASP. It was on .NET. With PHP you don't have the power to achieve true separation of concerns with with regards to DAL, BL and PL. With .NET you can. When built and implemented properly, you can reuse a DAL or even BL in Windows, Web and Mobile applications without changing a single line of code in them.

I never dissed PHP even for a moment - I was just disgruntled about all the negativity coming from the PHP fans towards .NET. My observation has taught me that these types of comments only fly when the particular party doesn't have extensive experience in the opposing technology. Implementing and maintaining a site is something completely different to actually developing it. I just wish people would give credit where credit is due, instead of adopting a "Micr0$oft is teh D3ViLLZ, opeN-$OurCE FTW!"-attitude. The .NET Framework is an incredibly powerful, scalable platform for development and actually DOES aid in RAD, contrary to most MS-haters' perception. ASP.NET (and ASP.NET MVC) are also powerful web-application frameworks geared towards large-scale applications, but just as applicable to smaller sites.

Can the die-hard PHP fans here really claim to have delved into the core of ASP.NET (and the .NET Framework for that matter) whilst toting these negative comments about it?

 

[midrange]

You say this in a way that maked PHP look slightly better than HTML 2. I have worked on both PHP & ASP for many years and they are equaly powerful and pretty much do the same, in different ways.

The big reason more people go with PHP is costs. And it's simple, really, to figure this one out. For anyone, who hasn't developed before it would cost far more to learn ASP than Linux. You need a Windows server licence (unless you pirate), and a pretty decent Windows IDE which also cost a lot of money. Linux is free, and many of excellent Linux IDE's are free as well.

VWD is free.

It's true about the hosting costs though - as a freelancer I mostly code in PHP due to the dictates of the clients' hosting environment.

 

[Guest 20221009]

The thing is, most developers (I'd go out on a limb and say 80%) already have a decent box running a higher-than-Home-spec Windows license running. Visual Web Developer (VWD) is free, as well as SQL Server Express Edition (SSEE). VWD and SSEE both have powerful editors built in. Most people reckon that Visual Studio (on which VWD) is one of the best IDEs around today... Again, my comment wasn't on ASP. It was on .NET. With PHP you don't have the power to achieve true separation of concerns with with regards to DAL, BL and PL. With .NET you can. When built and implemented properly, you can reuse a DAL or even BL in Windows, Web and Mobile applications without changing a single line of code in them.

I never dissed PHP even for a moment - I was just disgruntled about all the negativity coming from the PHP fans towards .NET. My observation has taught me that these types of comments only fly when the particular party doesn't have extensive experience in the opposing technology. Implementing and maintaining a site is something completely different to actually developing it. I just wish people would give credit where credit is due, instead of adopting a "Micr0$oft is teh D3ViLLZ, opeN-$OurCE FTW!"-attitude. The .NET Framework is an incredibly powerful, scalable platform for development and actually DOES aid in RAD, contrary to most MS-haters' perception. ASP.NET (and ASP.NET MVC) are also powerful web-application frameworks geared towards large-scale applications, but just as applicable to smaller sites.

Can the die-hard PHP fans here really claim to have delved into the core of ASP.NET (and the .NET Framework for that matter) whilst toting these negative comments about it?

+1

Microsoft has a lot of development tools that are simply just awesome and I think it is sad that certain developers are so caught up in th hate to even see the facts. I have done lots of PHP (since 2003), I still do now and then, but I am sold to the power of the .Net Framework.

If you don't believe me go search: XNA studio (create games for the Xbox,PC and Windows mobile)
Join the Bizspark, WebsiteSpark or Dreamspark initiatives and receive awesome software package and incredible support.

I am no fanboy, but I say recognise the good when its there for everybody to see

 

[kingrob]

I am no fanboy, but I say recognise the good when its there for everybody to see

For South African companies, it's all about cost, so even if there is some good, the Chief Financial Officer won't see it.

Also, I'm tired of people just hating open source for no other reason than fear.

 

[SilverNodashi]

The thing is, most developers (I'd go out on a limb and say 80%) already have a decent box running a higher-than-Home-spec Windows license running. Visual Web Developer (VWD) is free, as well as SQL Server Express Edition (SSEE). VWD and SSEE both have powerful editors built in. Most people reckon that Visual Studio (on which VWD) is one of the best IDEs around today... Again, my comment wasn't on ASP. It was on .NET. With PHP you don't have the power to achieve true separation of concerns with with regards to DAL, BL and PL. With .NET you can. When built and implemented properly, you can reuse a DAL or even BL in Windows, Web and Mobile applications without changing a single line of code in them.

True, but I was actually referring to the actual hosting of the website once it's built, which adds extra costs We currently have, on quick estimate, 1 Windows server for every 40 Linux servers. And these are just hosting clients, not website projects.

.NET[/b] (and the .NET Framework for that matter) whilst toting these negative comments about it?

point taken, .NET is is very powerful platform but when it comes to the internet there are other limits which we don't have control over and in this case both PHP & ASP (or .NET) delivers equally powerful applications. The point I was trying to bring across is that in general you'll find far more PHP developers than ASP / .Net developers - and this does add a bit to cost of ownership, which many companies have to take into consideration as well.

 

[shogun]

I'm totally with FarligOpptreden on this one. I don't really have much to add to his arguments. I've worked with both PHP and ASP.Net, and I much prefer working with .Net. For a number of reasons, but mainly because you can seperate code from markup in a way you cannot do with PHP and classic ASP.

For the typical small website, a PHP CMS like Joomla may be an easy fit, but that doesn't mean that ASP.Net is a bad choice.

I also prefer the calibre of developer I see building custom websites (PHP or ASP.Net).
I'd love a Rand for every time I saw a CMS developer paying out little chunks of cash for a "ready built plugin that does just what we need", only to find out that the plugin needs to be modified, but they don't have the skills to do it. These are not developers. They are lazy sods in for a quick buck with no ability to solve problems.

I also have to agree that all the websites i've seen hacked / exploited are those running on a CMS that hasn't been patched. A vulnerability is found in the CMS that affects EVERY site built in that version. The developers of the site don't patch the CMS (lazy sods again)... turkish hackers exploit all the sites they can find with the vulnerability and you end up with a huge "Hacked By... " all over your site.

Basically, going the CMS route is fine if you stay up to date and don't care much about building something completely different.

On the cost issue that's been thrown around here, I did a little checking quickly just to satisfy myself that .Net isn't actually that bad to host. Here's what I found (choosing the most similar specs in terms of disk space and bandwidth which would be best indicators of "Hardware" costs):

1. Web Africa

Windows Hosting
Elite - (2000 mb Disk Space & 20000 mb Traffic (ZA) & 10 MS SQL Server 2000/2005 DB's) - R251 pm

Linux Hosting
Enterprise - (2000mb Disk Space & 25000mb Traffic & 5 mysql/pgsql databases) - R300

So the linux solution is roughly the same price (if you assume the extra R50 covers the 5GB extra traffic). You get 5 more DB's on the microsoft hosting.

The costs are similar if you compare the Linux Elite and Windows Standard (also both similar in disk space and bandwidth)

2. Hetzner Germany

Root Server +/- 49 Euro. Windows OS adds 15 Euro. And that's the cheaper server. For the more expensize servers, the cost extra is the same, bringing the percentage difference down significantly.

3. Bytemark.co.uk

Add 10 Pounds to any of the dedicated servers for Windows Hosting. Again, as a bigger server is selected, the percantage increase drops.

I don't see how these differences are significant, especially when you factor in the cost of development into the total cost of a website. Depending on your hardware requirements, you could be saving money using windows hosting locally (WA Windows Elite vs Linux Enterprise).

Thoughts? Am I missing something here? Or are people really that cheap?

On w1z4rd's comment that ASP is 8 times slower than PHP (I will assume you mean ASP.Net here as classic ASP isn't really used any more), I call bollocks. PHP is an interpreted language, ASP.Net is a compiled language. That means that it does not have to parse the commands before it processes. The difference is actually much of a much and unless you have metrics, I have no faith in your statement. Comparing language speed is not an easy feat in a web environment as the main bottleneck is DB communications on a website which does not consume a lot of CPU.

[EDIT: I'll start with the metrics - turns out that ASP.Net is as much as 12 times faster than PHP if the PHP developer doesn't turn on op-code caching - http://naspinski.net/post/AspNet-vs-php--speed-comparison.aspx]

 

[FarligOpptreden]

Thank you mezu and shogun for the support! Felt like I was doing a Rambo here in taking on a whole army by myself...

For Shared Windows hosting, also check out Circle Hosting's offerings:

• 250 MB disk space
• 100 GB monthly bandwidth
• 5 MSSQL databases
• 5 MySQL databases (yes, 10 in total!)
• 25 POP3 mail accounts

...all for the astonishing price of R55 per month.

Compared to their Linux hosting offering (for R29 per month) you get:

• 500 MB disk space (double the windows hosting space, granted...)
• 10 GB monthly bandwidth (ooooh - only 1/10th of the windows hosting bandwidth... *tsk*)
• 0 MSSQL databases (what? none? well, you're probably not gonna need it in any case...)
• 1 MySQL databases (a whopping ONE database in total...)
• 25 POP3 mail accounts (same old, same old...)

So, does the shared Windows hosting really look THAT expensive still?

 

[midrange]

For Shared Windows hosting, also check out Circle Hosting's offerings

Signing up for this, tired of PHP.