After reading about Matt’s Experience with the Zend Framework, I came to the conclusion that one’s choice of a Web Development Framework doesn’t really matter. There are tons of frameworks out there and there’s a good reason for that. People still use them. If no one used a framework it would die a quick and painless death. Different frameworks offer different benefits to different people.

However, I’m willing to bet that First Choice is one of the main factors affecting a developer’s choice of framework. I fell into CakePHP first because I had an initial choice of CakePHP and Code Igniter. I couldn’t quite get CI working quickly enough, so I jumped on CakePHP and I’ve been here ever since.

Something else which solidifies the First Choice method is that the frameworks are sufficiently different that there is a learning curve when moving from one to the other. If you’ve started using one framework effectively, learning another (even to discover potential benefits) is usually not worth the time.

So I say this to you; be confident in your choice of a web development framework. Code Igniter, CakePHP, Symphony, even Ruby on Rails, it doesn’t matter and no one cares as long as you can crank out functional web applications in a reasonable amount of time.

Share This

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my Full RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Poll results for What Do You Look for in a PHP Framework are in:

Most of you prefer a framework that is Quick and Easy. Hey, I’m totally with you guys on that. When deciding on a web development framework, it has to be easy. It’s no fun if it takes hours to learn and saves you minutes. For me, CakePHP definitely fits this bill. The bake routines save me so much time during initial development.

Next on the list was a Less Code Needed and a Small Learning Curve. Again, that would definitely fit high on my list. I’m sorry, I’m just lazy that way.

That last result on the list is interesting, but expected. Not many people needed the framework to have a Small Footprint. With the type of processing that is required nowadays, sometimes the lite/light version doesn’t cut it. With that said, we also have a lot more processing power to push those heavy frameworks along. In my opinion, it’s less important that a back end framework be light as apposed to a JavaScript framework. The back end is handled strictly by the server, so the user doesn’t take the hit. With a JavaScript framework the user needs to download the entire thing. In this day and age it has become more cost effective to through some more CPU at the problem while saving weeks (or even months) in development time.

Share This

I am proud to present the first edition of Carnival of Web Development 2.0. This is my first time hosting one of these things, so enjoy:

General

1. Doug Boude presents DEMYSTIFYING JSON posted at Doug Boude (rhymes with ‘loud’)
2. sylv3rblade presents Stages of Software Development posted at Atma Xplorer, saying, “My take on the process of software development”
3. prakash presents A2Z Informative-Technology, Software, Internet, Tips, Ideas posted at A2Z Informative, saying, “Identifying the color code of an image on the screen is not an easy task. Usually it involves a multi step process and is time consuming. But this tool is able to find out HTML, RGB or HEX color of any pixel on the screen with just a single mouse click. This little tool is very useful for webmasters.”
4. Thorsten Ott presents Sourcebench - freelancer sites reviews posted at Sourcebench - building a better web.
5. Scott H presents 15 Web Sites College Students Can’t Live Without posted at College and Finance, saying, “Not specifically about design, but has a great list of web sites students love, including StumbleUpon which, in terms of developing a web site, can be quite useful.”

Share This

The power of CakePHP has a lot to do with conventions. The framework (like many others) harnesses its power by enforcing certain conventions and standards that users must follow. You name your database tables, file names, etc; a particular way and boom, models, views and controllers are automatically created and ready for use. This is the beauty of the MVC structure. Your URLs also follow thing structure: www.site.com/controller/action/params.

Straying From Convention

But sometimes, conventions suck. Sometimes you want greater control over things, but still don't wanna do them from scratch. The strictness of the MVC structure dictates how your URLs will look. Consider this: CakePHP has a basic pages controller, which you can use when you don't need a model or controller. You just enter the view and voilà , a page. But your pages have a URL of:

www.site.com/pages/page

Wouldn't you rather:

www.site.com/page.htm

The Routes Configuration examples in the CakePHP manual are a bit simple. Here's how to use a bit more advanced routing:

This says, consider everything that comes in with an HTM extension and send the URL as a parameter to the display action on the pages controller.

The idea was stolen from Lumad CMS. They use the following in Rewrite in .htaccess for their pages:

RewriteRule ^~(.*) content_pages/displayurl/$1 [L]
They use a prefix of '~' instead of a suffix of '.htm', but you get the picture. I'm sorry to disappoint you, I'm not as creative as you thought.

Popularity: 27%

Share This

To develop PHP and MySQL on a Windows machine, I usually use WAMP. I had tried XAMPP before, but I found that it was a bit bloated, with the OpenSSL and FTP Server, etc. So WAMP it was. But lately, I decided to give XAMPP another try and I like what I've got so far.

For the past three weekends, I've been away from my personal computer. The only life line I've had is my stock of Portable Apps on my 512MB USB disk. So I've been neglecting a few projects lately. But all of this has changed as of Friday. I've discovered XAMPP Lite. It's just what it says it is, a Lite version of XAMPP. The beauty of this is that it can also run from a USB disk. There's no install required. So partnered with XAMPP Lite, Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition, NotePad++ Portable, and, FileZilla Portable I can take my development on the road to anywhere I can stick in my USB disk.

Share This

Introduction

As you guys know, I've recently discovered the marvels of rapid web development with CakePHP. This shall be the first in a long serious of CakePHP related material coming from me since I've now veered off on a slightly different focus.

After a short analysis, I've picked CakePHP as my framework of choice. I've been struggling through it for a few months now, but it's by far better than the alternative of coding by hand (Yeah, I know I'm lazy). I've struggled through it so that you don't have to.

Downloading - Stable or Alpha Version

Step one is downloading CakePHP. The first problem that you'll run into is that there are two (2) versions to pick from: Stable 1.1 and Alpha 1.2. When I first started out, I needed to use CakePHP for a project instantly, so I decided to with the stable version because the word alpha scared me a little bit. I mean, it's not even beta yet.

Share This

New Domain

I has finally occurred to me that I should have gotten my own domain name a long time ago. Really, I don't know what I was waiting for, but it was about time. Since my focus is Web 2.0, WebDevelopment2.com was an obvious choice. I've already written about moving wordpress to a different domain, so moving to this domain was walk in the park. I loaded up PhpMyAdmin and exported my database. Pulled up Notepad++ and did a search and replace for my old URL to the new one. Saved the file, zipped it back up, and uploaded it to the server. Since I usually deal with large databases, I didn't even bother trying to load into PhpMyAdmin. Bigdump is now my favorite database importer for MySQL.

Finally, I loaded up the .htaccess file on the old domain name and slapped in a RewriteRule with a 301 redirect to WebDevelopment2.com. And Viola, here we have Wordpress blog perfectly redirected, without losing a single inbound link. Sure, the Page Rank on the domain name is 0 (for now), but with a name like Web Development, it won't be for long.

Share This

Almost two months ago I mentioned that I was looking into some PHP Frameworks I must say, that I've procrastinated with the whole thing. Since then I've caught up on a few. A friend of mine tried introducing me to Code Igniter framework. I didn't really get a good feel for it. He mentioned that it was more powerful and flexible, but I'm lazy, so I was looking for a lazy man PHP Framework.

Enter CakePHP

Here's a bit of background. I know you've heard of Ruby on Rails (RoR). I mean who hasn't? Well, I'm one of those guys who never paid it much mind, and for that I was wrong :). RoR introduces the MVC model: Model-View-Controller pattern. What these Frameworks do is bring this pattern to the PHP platform and I love them for it.

CakePHP is a bit simpler than Code Igniter at first, so that's what drew me to it. However, this weekend I stumbled upon the Baking capability of CakePHP and I was hooked. I have an upcoming project, which I've decided to use CakePHP on. I will keep you posted on how things go.

This is what helped me make my decision: CodeIgniter vs. CakePHP

Share This