Over the past few years I have checked out many of the popular PHP frameworks out there. The three I did the most development with were CakePHP, CodeIgniter and Zend Framework. Each one has fills a very different set of needs, and I think most people do not understand that. People seem to take framework reviews very personally for some reason as if its a reflection of their ability.
Addressing Your Needs
To oversimplify things, it’s easy to map your role with some of the different frameworks. I choose these three, because they represent my point very well. I’m going to fudge the definitions a little bit here, and toss WordPress (or ‘insert your favorite CMS here’) into the mix as well. While the mapping may be an oversimplification, remember that the particular role’s core needs may match your needs for a project, even if you fit another role. Read more…
Disclaimer: in a production environment, spend the extra time and resources to meet Magento’s requirements. This post is about setting up a development environment.
I have had one hell of a time trying to get Magento up and running on my development server. I have probably spent about 5 hours fighting with mcrypt and for some reason, it is just not playing nicely with my setup (PHP 5.3, with everything compiled manually). I brought in a server guru as well, and he had the same problem. I think we both tore out some hair.
I’ve hacked together some steps to get it up and running for developers who want to get their hands dirty quickly. Read more…
Clients have been asking me since its early beta stages what my thoughts are about vBulletin 4. Usually I joke and spew out the usual garbage about how horrible it is. I’m not saying it isn’t, but I think it’s time I give it a fair review.
Background
Before I go into much detail, let me begin by explaining my experience and background with vBulletin. My first use with vBulletin was back in 2004 on a gaming site. Since 2005, I have been developing on it as an application platform, and for a while, was doing it full time (2 years or so). I am confident that I am one of the most experience vBulletin modders around. I love vBulletin, though over the years I became annoyed with working with it due to the outdated codebase. In the past two years or so, I have shifted most of my custom develoment to Zend Framework, which is of course at a much higher standard.
With the illusion of vBulletin 4 in my mind, I was very excited to begin looking at it. Read more…
