Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 20:11:49 +0200 From: Michal Pasternak <michal@pasternak.w.lub.pl> To: John Von Essen <essenz@beck.quonix.net> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The Website Message-ID: <20040330181149.GA74596@pasternak.w.lub.pl> In-Reply-To: <20040330115339.D3419@beck.quonix.net> References: <KmpG67BOHaaAFwo2@caomhin.demon.co.uk> <40695EDA.10793.7ABE6086@localhost> <20040330115339.D3419@beck.quonix.net>
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John Von Essen [Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 12:02:20PM -0500]:
> I believe I was the one that requested a core sanction. The reason is I
> remember when this thread came up before... It's difficult to go out and
> start doing something and dedicate alot of time when you are not
> absolutely sure that it will be accepted.
On the other hand, how do they have to sanacize something, that they didn't
see?
> A core sanction would also help in other areas... What is the decided
> platform? Perl, PHP, MySQL, Postgresql.
>
> What happens if I go out and do it in mod_perl and mysql, and then a core
> member says, "It should be done in php like site xyz".
Well, that's a good question.
First, philosophy. Sorry, if that's obvious, but:
* structure of the site: what do we want to have, what we will be introducing
in the future. Very important, start from creating it. Discuss it. Many
times.
* clean, easy to maintain code - that lets new people contribute to such
project easier
* separate data from page design/look. Always. Learn about MVC pattern, if
you didn't do that already.
* remember about machine, that serves the content. Not everything has to
be a dynamic PHP script, you can save rendered HTML pages to save CPU
time, perhaps in many areas of the site.
* translations! Every letter of text on the page (images included) should
be translateable to other languages. Think about this, while writing
a web engine.
* 2-clicks rule, cross-browser compatibility, coding - utf, of course,
similar webinterface stuff
* security! slashdot-like trolls on forums, bruteforce webform password
crackers... remember about this.
Tools, tools, tools.
* choose by features and possibilities, that the tool gives you, not by
popularity. "More people use PHP & MySQL, so it's better" sounds just like
"More people use Windows XP, than FreeBSD, so Windows's better".
* choose by features, not by speed. According to extreme programming rules,
you should optimize only the bottleneck; how can you predict the bottleneck
if you have no project?
Only those tools I know a bit, sorry for not providing more information:
* PHP: very popular among fresh webdevelopers, sometimes very criticized by
the senior ones, especially by people, who like real object-oriented
languages. Objects in PHP 5 are getting much better, perhaps PHP 6 or PHP
7 will be really good in this area. DOM XML module, except ugly syntax,
seems to be pretty useable at parsing XML forms. It is quite easy to
implement basic Adapter/Interface pattern in PHP; on the other hand,
language syntax has still much TBD. Popular. Popularity should *not*
be the _only_ factor considered.
* Python: there are a few interesting Python projects to do webdevelopment,
which intensivley utilize Python's syntax & object-oriented features; they
are definetley worth giving them a look, among others:
* Zope and Plone. Enough said - very complete, very sophisticated,
still easy to use.
* Twisted Python together with Newov (from divmod.org) - that's a quite
interesting webdevelopment framework, if you ask me. Strongly
suggested, if you don't plan to use it, at least have a look at
the way problems are solved there. And, you can turn your simple
test webserver into load-balancing spread cluster with single
line of code.
Database?
* PostgreSQL is pretty good. In fact, it is very advanced database. MySQL
could be an option, if you don't need that much features. Speed of
database should *not* be the _only_ factor considered. Pros? Data can
be shared between no-matter-what-language-you-write-it-in software.
I have modified some sites, that used MySQL, and suffered because of lack of
some features, that were already present in PostgreSQL. I don't know,
how this two DBMS compare to each other at the time of this writing,
but personally I'd choose PostgreSQL, unless someone will proove me
the existence of the same features in MySQL server.
* Zope uses ZODB, object oriented database engine. ZODB is definetley
worth having a look; together with IndexedCatalog it can be quite
fast. Pros? Many. Cons? Python-only, AFAIK.
Just my $.25.
Starting - as an open project - "the new corporate FreeBSD site" - requires
much more discussion. Not to mention your own (yes, yours) time and
resources. And, the discussion, if the page should be red, green or black
should come after 40 - 75% of the code is done, not earlier.
--
m
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