Requiring a website destined for your own business? There are lots of companies supplementing web development services at every corner and nook of Los Angeles.

How to come up with the appropriate web development company in Los Angeles for your website, evidently you would eye for a company that is creative and innovative, comprehends the business and is very reasonable in terms of pricing.

You have to launch the decision making process by assessing at several companies own website. It will supplement you a fair thought on the design intricacies of the company and may also give you the freedom to know what customers have worked for, the intensity of the projects they have taken and if these web development companies in Los Angeles acquired any customer testimonial. You have to be reminded on not to engage with the web development company whose own site is badly executed.

Wrote or talk to their client support; the support should have the capability to answer your queries in an informative, precise and detailed manner if you acquire no response or the reply is not that encouraging, simply do not deal with these web development companies. It would be best recommended to talk to the previous clients of these web development companies and learn and assess about their own experience with that particular web development company.

You have to be certain that you get to acquire the website code and its application. You can ask these web development companies in Los Angeles a CD copy of the entire live code when the task is finished. You should possess the rights to acquire the accomplished solution and be able to host it on a separate manner if needed.

You have to go for a particular web development company in Los Angeles which gives you the freedom for a direct interaction with the web developers and the web designers.

This will practically make sure that you are incorporated in the development and design process and can come up with some variations in design as per your requirement and acquire the last output as you want.

According to these web developers in Los Angeles, The search engine promotion and ranking services are similarly essential to our business and website of course. You have to assess for the type of web promotion your web development company in Los Angeles supplements. You can converse to them about how they initialize and launch promotions after the website is initiated.

Asking in terms of the hosting services is equally vital as well, some of the web development companies in Los Angeles that supplements web development services are engaged in a third party hosting service provider. You can assess where they will host the website and what their down time will be.

On the other hand, pricing is an important component as well. However, you should not practically compromise on the quality for pricing. You have to assess the costing for the entire deal, you have to ask whether the price of designing comprise domain registration, hosting, and there are some maintenance charge as well. You also have to be reminded that the web promotion is charged on a separate basis; you have to ask what you require to pay for it.

You have to decide on a particular web development company in Los Angeles which supplements on every mention component and has the most competitive costing component.

On the other hand, in August of 1991, the pioneer website manifested with authorship coming from Tim Lee which is tagged as the inventor of the World Wide Web. Thus, the famous Tim Lee emerged as the pioneer individual to incorporate the Internet communication with hyper text.

At that point in time, hyper text was only destined for showcasing scientific documents of several studies to be kept with browsing details on a sole computer.

And during that time, the internet was ultimately a mere career of people using internet like news and email postings in public forum.

At present, web development is considered to be a collaborative effort manifesting between departments. It incorporated enhancing websites for accessing the World Wide Web with the help of Internet or a simple private network through intranet. The Method of web developing includes some or all of the following in a suggested period of time:

Website content
Website Development
Website Design
Client Side/ Server Side scripting
Customer liaison Configuration of Network
Server E-commerce enhancement

However, experts and web development companies in Los Angeles eradicates components of website design from the idea of website development and maintain the concept confined to writing coding and markup.

From mid 90s to early 2005, the price of web hosting and web development has decrease drastically. Small scale companies, together with the large scale companies, have been given freedom to create them for small scale companies and for individuals as well. Such growth in terms of quantity of production has aggravated the increase and growth in the said industry.

However, the reason behind the large increase in the industry lies in the great availability of costs, platforms and resources that are free of charge. Say for example, the Apache, PHP, LAMP-Linux, MySQL are all disseminated free of charge.

According to web development companies and website design companies in Los Angeles, among other components, one is the immediate onset and fast market foray of easy access WYSIWYG or more commonly known as “what you see is what you get” software like Adobe Dreamweaver, Web dev, Microsoft Expression Studio and Net beans. This set software has given access to all interested ones in enhancing and modifying pages in a website.

Tools and resources of the next generation according to some Web development companies in Los Angeles have been attained by utilizing the solid growth and emergence in LAMP, Enterprise edition technologies, JAVA platform, and Microsoft.NET technologies. In a way, it aided to operate applications in the internet. And at that point in time, it was only available on desktop computers. These are tagged as free of constraints of particular nature.

The evolution and emergence of web development has manifested and shifted the medium of commerce into a sole entity for socializing and communication at its best. And now, it is influencing all types of business, social interactions, and communications. Web development company in Los Angeles are doing their very best to always be aware and updated to the latest trends in terms of modifying your website.

However, if you are thinking in terms of the traffic in your own website or blog, then worry no more because you can acquire plain and easy strategy and you can be able to magnetize large amount of users towards your website.

You would have the power to entice and catch the attention of millions of internet users all over the globe. You have to be reminded that web design is of ultimate value for any website.

As a final note, you really need to have these web development companies in Los Angeles to help you in performing all the improvement, modifications and enhancements in your website in order to meet success in your business in the near future.

Out sourcing of web development services is truly a trend that has manifest in recent period. Originally, individuals were a bit skeptical in transmitting the work abroad, but at this point in time, it is a modern day boon. It can emerge as a large cost saving component for medium and small scale business but it is also considered to be a bit tricky proposition sometimes because of the risked that is involved in it. The secret is to simply balance the anticipated advantage like lessening the cost and minimizing the risk by coming up with appropriate and practical outsourcing decision.

Several countries in Asia and Russia have emerged as some of the most popular outsourcing capitals for SEO services and Web development services. However, Los Angeles City is slowly emerging and is tagged as one of the hottest outsourcing locations because of the availability of English speaking workforce and skilled individuals. Meanwhile, a lot of small scale and medium scale companies and business in Europe, Australia, and the United States outsource their web development service to these Los Angeles web development experts.

Companies and businesses posses a lot of excellent reasons for engaging in these web development services in Los Angeles and outsourcing to a web designing company or even an SEO company in Los Angeles are considered to be advantageous from the cost point of view because the services are supplemented at a very reasonable cost. The main reason for this cost efficient pricing is the availability of skilled as well as competent web experts.

In the event that you outsource work to a particular web development company in Los Angeles, it is not only cost effective in relation to the terms and conditions of service rates but also save sufficient training cost and infrastructure pricing. Another thing is the time difference; it can be used to finish the critical work during night time when regular workers are simply not available.

There are some benefits as well; the web development company in Los Angeles can pay a lot of attention on a more technical thinking and maintaining trade partnerships and also boost up the efficiency by multi tasking functions. It also aids the company to be at pace and updated with the varying technology without changing the infrastructure.

Outsourcing your SEO services as well as your web development services makes sufficient sense, but it is very vital to outsource the service from the eligible web development company in Los Angeles. And despite all the benefits of the manner of outsourcing, there have been minimal instances of a lot of fraudulent companies that appear very convincing and appealing at first but then supplement low quality service or simply vanish.

The secret is to look for the proper web development company in Los Angeles to award the services to and that no only comprise assessing several companies but also seeing if they truly match the preferences of your business.

And before you select a web development company in Los Angeles, you have to ensure to look up such previous record and references and perform a thorough research in relation to the credentials. In the scenario of a SEO service company in Los Angeles, you have to ensure that they utilize white hat techniques in relation to optimization and do not promise that they will do it in overnight when talking about increase in their search engine rankings.

If these considerations are truly taken care of, outsourcing can be very advantageous to some companies. Selecting the right web designing company in Los Angeles can truly be the secret to success. As per these experienced web developers in Los Angeles, outsourcing for web services will be forever here to stay and it is going to get larger in the coming era.

Are you still not able to acquire the anticipated turn over from your business? Is your website able to acquire and keep hold of the traffic? Well, if your answer is no, then this is the best time to take over.

Do you have an idea that custom and creative website design solutions can aid you in generating money for your internet business? Stay ahead in this kind of international marketing edge with the most excellent website designs that can solidly capture the market geographically or globally. At the height of this rival realm, ,each industry is paid attention in terms of the trendiest website designing strategies meeting up the guidelines of search engine algorithm as well as global web designing executions.

Coming up with a custom website is a very complicated job where the web based experts can truly guide you in this kind of industry; however, this is not the issue, as you can now get the services of these website design and development companies in Los Angeles for your design needs and preferences.

There are tons of website design and development companies in Los Angeles and internationally that supplements website design at a very reasonable cost yet modern in their approach. Tailor a website with stellar navigation template and some other software tools, which can acquire real business solutions that no other rival can ever match. But it will be advantageous if you can select a company, which can offer all kinds of solution in relation to website development under a single company.

A basic website design and development provider in Los Angeles can only supplement the needs that are met on-time, greater efficiency and within the price range. You have to go for a particular website design and development Company in Los Angeles that thoroughly understands the requirement and preferences of the customer and the industry and supplement a website design that would give you and your business an edge from your rivals.

You have to select a website development Company where you acquire primary solutions because your website should be search engine and user friendly, which is the primary objective at this point in time. You have to invest in website design company n Los Angeles where you can acquire guaranteed high quality components and gauges such as entire consistency and easy navigation. You have to be reminded that only expertly managed skilled individuals can supplement an extraordinary look to any type of website that will attract more and more clients to your website; ergo, increasing your conversion factors.

Your incorporation with such a website development company in Los Angeles can add significance at any phase of your business. You have to select a website development company that provides an anthology of services in web design solutions where you can acquire benefits to come up with all types of reciprocal answers.

You simply have to regard the fact that getting the services of a web development company in Los Angeles is not a suggestion for several website owners as there are particular advantages incorporated with it as well. You have to be reminded that outsourcing is not a new thing to the realm but it has obtained such popularity in the previous years. However, the question here is: what are the benefits of outsourcing projects to a particular web design and development company.

Makes your attention on your business strategies and methods – Relaying your work to some other web development companies simply means, now you can target on growth as well as the development of the core of your business. You should not worry in terms of the website and its attribute as your selected company will take care of all this. There is no denying that every small or large scale business company possess a lot of tasks up their belt and by delegating their work with some other company, they can focus their attention in terms of their operations and business plans.

Cost efficiency – This one of the pioneering benefits of outsourcing your web development services to these web development experts in Los Angeles. However, there is a misconception that delegating your work to some web development company will simply burn a big hole in your money pocket. Practically this is untrue.

And on the contrary, outsourcing simply means that you will truly enjoy the competitive advantage of low price as well as higher returns. Web development companies in Los Angeles make you lessen your expenditures as well as the cots of equipment and manpower.

Access to contemporary and professional workforce – Outsourcing these web development services to these experts from Los Angeles exposes you to a group of skilled and technical hands as well as fictive tailors of websites. And because they are equipped with flourishing resources and advanced technologies, they can easily cater to the rising demand in terms of creative web services, businesses need at this point in time. These web development experts in Los Angeles abide comprehensive and tremendous style and approach and are experts in operating complex and artful tasks.

At the end of the day, we can say that having doubts in terms of the potentials of a company is truly not a good sign. You have to put your trust into them with regards to your website related roles and witness the massive enhancements. So, you have to broaden your vision and capture the stellar website opportunities they are supplementing just for you.

Indian Php Web Design Website Development Company Recruits PHP Developers Programmers n Designers in India

PHP which stands for Hypertext Preprocessor is an open source scripting language. It is commonly used for Developing Dynamic Websites and Web Applications. A lot of functionalities in the development arena with good system security and functional ease are provided by this robust server side application The Web Development Companies in India have surpassed in the field of PHP Website Development. Corporate Companies across the world are outsourcing their PHP Web Development Projects to the highly skilled Indian Php Web Developers so as to get more dynamic features added to their company websites.

The array of PHP Web Development Services includes Development of Ecommerce Shopping Carts, Customized Web Development Application, Product Catalogs, Content Management System, ecommerce B2B B2C Web Portals Development, Payment Gateway, iPhone Application Development, Custom Php Application Development, Static and Dynamic Php MySql Websites Designing and Development kind of Website Development Services. Over the years PHP Web Development India has been continuously improved which has made PHP more interactive and enable to create applications and websites which have been used at a large scale in today’s technological world. PHP is most compatible with HTML and is one of the most preferred languages accepted across the globe for development of Web applications. With demands increasing day by day and number of websites going live, a bit of research is needed to find a company providing best PHP Website Development Solutions.

Outsourcing PHP Projects Development to India is becoming popular because Offshore Web Development Companies in India have got an outstanding experience in Custom PHP Web Development, PHP Website Design, PHP Web Programming and Designing. Talented and expert php developers, enthusiastic website professionals, php website designers, expert PHP Web Programmers have brought out India in outsourcing PHP development market. These developers use PHP MySQL for different types of dynamic web applications in order to modify handy module accessible source code of custom application or modifying as per their client requirements. WeTheDevelopers.com is Leading Indian PHP Web Development Company has been providing PHP Website Designing and Web Application Development Services to clients in USA UK Australia India Europe South Africa world wide.

PHP Development India has become synonym to Web Development Applications as a lot of Web Development Companies in India USA Canada UK Australia Africa Europe have been using PHP and MySql due to its lots of advantages over other web programming languages such as VB.NET, ASP.NET, Java etc. With a state of the art Global Web Development Center in Saurashtra Capital Rajkot in Gujarat India and a highly qualified and professional Php Web Developers, Php Website Programmers, Php Web Designers team in WeTheDevelopers also known as Php Web Development India has fruitfully delivered many Php Web Designing Website Development Projects to Corporate Clients in USA Canada Africa UK Australia Europe and in India as well.

PHP Web Development Costing Part – PHP is open source language, reducing not just the initial investment but also the execution, maintenance and debugging costs involved in the complete website development cycle throughout the Project. Consistency and Performance of PHP Web Development – Php MySql Web Development is highly Reliable and effective for any complex Web Development Applications used for corporate companies.

Support of PHP Web Development – The open source nature of the technologies language provides easy and cost effective support to Design and Develop Various Customized Web Development Applications. High Security of PHP Website Development – PHP which runs on Apache Web Server which is much healthier and secured as compared to other languages such as ASP.NET, JAVA, VB.NET which runs on IIS.

Main Benefits of PHP Projects Outsourcing to a Company with experience in PHP Web Development in India are cheaper development cost, lower Web Application Development time to carry multiple mysql databases using least amount of resources. That’s Why Indian Php Web Design Website Development Company Recruits PHP Developers Programmers n Designers in India Thanks & Regards WeTheDevelopers.com – Php Web Design Website Development Company in India

Some people think creating a professional website is complicated and others try to do it themselves, because they think it is too expensive to pay a professional to do it for them. In both cases they are telling the truth if they rely on the classic applications, such as HTML-editors and photo enhancement software applications. These applications are not only expensive, but also too complicated to use for the average do-it-yourself website creator.

Many aspiring webmasters ask professionals to do it for them and very often the price tag is very high. The webmasters that try to create websites on their own are not always happy with the results because of the lack of skills.

Software developers have been studying these problems and have dedicated themselves to offer a solution for these problems. The result had to be a web development application that is not only easy to use, but also very affordable:

Site Rubix is the result of a huge development that has taken an entire year and a well over $100,000 investment, before the completed version could be offered to the public. The application will not only be used by starting website creators but also by advanced website developers. Not only will it be possible to set up a website in a matter of minutes, professionals will be able to set up large campaigns with hundreds of pages for their clients faster than ever.

Every kind of webmaster could benefit from this application, but especially the internet marketers will appreciate this tool because it has been customized especially for setting up marketing campaigns. Images, banners, video and screen-shots can be added in no time. Taking and customizing screenshots usually requires the use of a screen-shot application, but this will not be necessary anymore, everything has been built in to create complete websites.

One would expect that a website development application like this has a very high price tag. Nothing is further from the truth. While Site Rubix will enable us to create professional looking websites in no time, it will be very affordable.

When one speaks of Flash game design or Flash graphic design, what invariably flashes across anyone’s mind is animation. Flash scripting is inadvertently directed to development of animation, involving morphing or stimulating motion using certain graphics.

Tweening is a concept of Flash that facilitates animation upon you specify the key frames for a given animation task for a fixed period of time. The process involves you to decide and specify the first frame and the last frame of position or shape of the animation subject to leave the rest to Flash. Flash then “tweens” the frames in between to generate a smooth animation of change in position or shape of the subject within a fixed period of time, hence stimulating motion or morphing of the subject in question.

Besides, automatic generation of smooth animation, the other advantages of tweening is minimum file size of such an animation file. Tweening, thus, is instrumental to easy and quick flash game design and flash graphic design. The concept minimizes manual flash scripting and saves valuable time and energy during Flash web development.

There are two types of Tweening predominantly, as hinted already:

Motion Tweening: When the ultimate effect of tweened animation is to stimulate motion within a fixed time frame, it is called motion tweening. The motion tweening can be change in position or size or rotation etc. of the subject(s) to be animated, which can be a text block or a symbol or a drawing or otherwise, within a fixed time period.

Shape Tweening: Tweening targeted to change the shape of the subject within a given timeline is called Shape Tweening. Under the purview, you select the initial drawing or shape at the start of the timeline and another shape at another point later in the timeline to let Adobe Flash generate the frame values in between to stimulate morphing animation effect.

The Motion Tweening is the more popular of the two types and fairly easier to implement than Shape Tweening. Flash also allows tweening of colour shades, including fading effects.

Now this is one of my biggest moans, Web Developers who con small traders with little knowledge of web sites into signing up for a long term deal with something that will not work for them.

I thought that this kind of practice would be disappearing these days but no. I recently came across a local trader, a lady who does interior design. She is very good at her profession and knew that she needed to expand her business and saw the Internet as a way to do it. Just before Christmas she was contacted by a company, who were visiting the area. Basically they were going around as many local small traders and signing them up for a simple 3 page templated web site and then moving on.
Unfortunately this lady who was just about to fly off to Australia to visit her son got caught up with this company and was, too say the least railroaded into signing a 5 year contract for a 3 page web site.

I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with it but, they paid no attention what so ever to Search Engines, they stuffed the keywords and paid very little attention to Meta Tag Title and Description. Their blurb went on about linking etc but how was a complete novice able to understand this.

I find this practice completely unacceptable in this current day and especially in this current climate where small traders need every penny they can get and do not need it to be wasted on a poor web site.

Online shopping, at its best describes the revolutionary developments in and around our world. Time-is considered the most valuable of all and finding an alternative to save the same, can attract lot many potential customers.

How do you get started with the online venture and to reap its maximum benefit?

The answer is simple – get the basic things of your eCommerce website right! But, this is certainly easy said than done. But right implementation of the basics of eCommerce web development can get things straight for you.

Following are some of the basic important things which you should consider of utmost importance while building an eCommerce website.

1.Make your navigation user friendly: People using your website would love to stick around your website if they find it easy to use and easy to navigate. One would find it strange but it is the truth that- the visitors to an eCommerce websites are, for the most part, window shoppers, accidental browsers or some curious onlookers. It’s the duty of your online shopping websites and its featured contents to draw the curiosity and interest of such visitors and make them a possible buyer. Your website should be designed in such a manner that, any visitors visiting it for the first time should find it informative and a good learning experience. This can pave way for possible change of such visitors turning into a potential customer.

2.Make the content of your website- keywords and key phrase rich. Keywords and Key phrases are the words or common phrases you would have probably used in your searches through search engines. To make it simpler, this article is intended to have the keyword ‘eCommerce web development, and the possible key phrase could be the keywords combined with the phrase ‘ importance of getting it right’. But take care not to overfill your website content with just the keywords and key phrases. Meaningless overuse of these, just to get the ranks in the search engine listing can volley back with further consequences. Your visitors might find the content uninteresting, and your business might never actually prosper as you had imagined of.

3.Cross browser compatibility: Misconception such as the only existence of browser – which being the Internet explorer, is quite popular among the starters. There are over 100 different Internet browsers, firefox and opera being some of the top competitors of IE. Hence make your website cross browser compatible.

4.Effective use of images and videos: Image can best provide the opportunity to the customers to decide for themselves; if they want that product or not? For any eCommerce website, image description of the products is a pre-requisite parameter. You can further refine the experience of the visitors through Videos as well. But, just a word of caution, too much usage of heavy images and videos can increase the load time of your website. Hence, don’t forget to get the images or videos compressed or rather say optimized, before uploading it to your websites.

5.Enable browsers to remove narrowing down options: When a user narrow down their search for a particular product in a particular category, and all of sudden he feels to get back to earlier pages. Providing them with options to comeback to those pages without repetitive “back button” can enhance the visitors experience to your website. Hence provide them the option to easily remove the navigation selection as directed by your website, to a rather independent selection scheme.

These were some of the basics which you need to keep in mind while building your own eCommerce website for a successful online venture.

Various Php development company in India have been able to catch the nerve of the e commerce industry. These companies have developed a significant strand in delivery quality and timely services to clients located in Indian subcontinent and abroad. Their host of php development services includes development of shopping carts, and product catalogues, content management system, ecommerce portals, events calendar, membership websites, file manipulation and handling lead management system. This is not all. They provide with directory and classifieds submission, enterprise systems, dynamic image manipulation, thumbnail generation, product and price comparison facility, inclusion of XML / RSS feed, banner rotation, activity planning, members area development, managing of online forums, communities, messages, blogs, polls, surveys forum and bulletin boards, and much more.

Some of the benefits of hiring a company with expertise in Php programming India and php web development India are

* They charge economically for execution and maintenance of website. Even there debugging cost is quite less.

* Php solutions offered by them run on Apache web server. This is compatible with various UNIX, windows, Linux, etc.

* They have the ability to use different open source applications and provide with pre packaged competent PHP modules. This will help in saving your application development time.

* Further, it has the capability of supporting many popular databases and uses minimum resources.

*In addition to this, the Php solutions are considered a propeller that helps your website to touch the apex.

To know how php development India can be helpful to you it is wiser to go over Internet and look out for the company that has the capability in providing the best e commerce solution for your company.

Everybody needs business in that recession period, every company fear from recession because it’s completely difficult to manage the company in that recession time, if we talk about particular outsourcing industry. Now a day Indian web development and Indian offshore companies shows their smartness in dealing the recent recessions Companies focus on holding there existing clients and try to find new clients by using cost effective way.

Actually it is the greatest opportunity to do new venture, when talent is available and resources are cheap, we should not panic and give up our websites, or accept that we will get less business, but if you will try to fight not in recession but in any circumstances I am sure that you will get batter result.

only make a site for the business it’s not the solution, if you want to fight with your competitors you need to applying creativity and providing verity with cost effective to your customer in that recession period that will be your plus point for you business. In Web Development era everybody wants their website to be fast, and easy understand for the users. After complete the website bring user to your site that should be the aim of every online business, after all visitors will be your clients.

Here is some great news for the e-commerce sites just check it out.

In that recession period consumer wants quality things with great offers because in recession people are not ready to spend to much money on particular thing, for E-commerce sites we needs to survive our products with great offers,

For example:

· Special wedding offers

· Seasonal offers (like winter or summers)

· If you are purchasing above 1000 bucks you will get 10% discount,

· Write guaranties on home page and in attractive banner.

· Lots of sites are not writing address on their site that means it could be a fake site so please write your address on your contact us page and also write your cell no if it is possible so costumes can easily get in touch with you,

· 20% off on some products or give a small gift on any purchase.

By using that kinds of offer customers will have to attract man, and you will get more business. Perception system will help you put these products on your site with effective manner.

So “Are you ready to jump?” just compare the quality of work and prices, and get business in that recession period we will help you to make your site and also for getting business. Among such high quality services offering companies perception System is one of them, just check out the portfolio of perception system you feel that reliable out put with reasonable prices, after all Customer satisfaction is our motto,

You are just one click away to do this,

For more information visit on

www.perceptionsystem.com

I recently had the opportunity to develop a small online booking system. This time round I was determined to make use of some development framework. Not for me the slow slog of writing all my code from scratch – surely we have moved beyond that now in web development?

The big question was – which framework to use? Since the advent of Ruby on Rails, development frameworks have become quite the flavour d’jour and there are now, well, maybe not thousands of them, but quite a few! The last time I heard there are about 80 development frameworks out there. I am not 100% user of this number, it could be a bit higher, it could be a bit more conservative (on this site you can find about 40 PHP frameworks listed – http://www.phpwact.org/php/mvc_frameworks). The point is, the web developer is now really spoilt for choice. Which is a problem in itself, since having too much choice can leave you dithering between different options.

This article is therefore about how I made my choice, which was CakePHP, and which factors I took into consideration.

Obviously and certainly I will get bombarded with “Why don’t you try X framework, it is really much simpler to use…” type responses. That is quite OK, to each his own! But this is the choice I made and I am sticking to it. Frankly, the idea of going through another learning curve gives me the heeby-jeeby’s….

I found that the selection criteria were not independent. In other words, once I’ve ruled out some frameworks due to some specific criteria, other factors came into play. It was therefore more a process of elimination than judging all the frameworks off a predefined set of criteria.

The first major selection point was: Ruby on Rails or not.

Obviously there is the attraction of using a brand new, hip, buzz-word hyped framework. You can’t go wrong with something that is getting so much attention… or can you?

Let’s look at some of the selection criteria that filtered out Ruby on Rails”

1. Ease of installation and ability to run on shared hosting

The problem is that most of my clients make use of a shared hosting environment. Can Ruby on Rails run on common-or garden variety type shared hosting? The answer was, I soon discovered – no. One needs to either have access your own private servers or run on a shared hosting environment that has Ruby on Rails pre-installed. Admittedly, there are a couple of them now starting up. A comprehensive list of hosting providers that offer Ruby On Rails hosting can be found on the RoR Wiki – http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/RailsWebHosts.

2. Minimize the learning curve

Even though I knew that any new framework will involve a steep learning curve, I really didn’t have the guts to go through TWO learning curves – one for the language itself and one for the framework. I might still have been prepared to go through the learning curve though if it wasn’t for the fact that RoR requires special hosting.

So basically the decision was: Not RoR. And based on criterion 2, I decided to stick to a PHP framework, and not go for something else based on Perl or something else since I’ve been developing in PHP for the past two, almost three years. Having said this, it is all very well to say that CakePHP allows you to use your PHP skills – because it is an object oriented framework/MVC based framework it has its own rich language infrastructure. You still need to learn the CakePHP terminology and the learning curve is pretty steep!

3. Ability to run on PHP 4

Although PHP 5 offers more object oriented features, once again, not all shared hosts offer PHP 5 out of the box. I decided that I wanted to stick to a framework that will offer backwards compatibility and enable me to run on most of the servers that I, as well as my clients, host on.

My further criteria came down to:

4. Must have good documentation

Under good documentation I count the following:

- User manual

- Examples and code snippets

- Screen casts and videos – although I do not see these as essential

5. Good support by the user community

This, in combination with formal documentation is absolutely essential. All of these frameworks are pretty young and the documentation is also constantly evolving. Some documentation might be patchy in details. This is where the user support in terms of the community comes in. How active are the forums? Is there a bug tracker? Any other informal tutorials, write-ups, comments, blogs and other support?

6. Regular upgrades and bug fixes

..but not so close to each other that the software becomes unstable and unusable. Backward compatibility is also important.

Version number of the software can be used to indicate maturity.

Working off the following list (http://www.phpit.net/article/ten-different-php-frameworks/) one can see that the list has narrowed down to the following frameworks:

- CakePHP

- Seagull Framework

- WACT – ‘disqualified’ since the latest version now requires PHP 5

- Zoop

- CodeIgniter

The next step was a bit less scientific – but still fitted in with point 5 – how well is this Framework regarded? How much support does it generate in the ‘community’.

I scouted through forums and followed links and surfed the net and tried to get a general feel – and overall, CakePHP did seem to come out tops. A similar check that one can do is the following – do a Google search for each of the frameworks and see how many results are returned. This will give you a good idea of the general support, number of tutorials, number of forum posts and general ‘talked about’ factor for the specific framework. The results for this exercise can be seen here: http://www.tm4y.co.za/cakephp/ruby-on-rails-popularity-for-web-development.html

In summary therefore, the support for Ruby on Rails and the amount of information available for it is astounding and you will probably not go wrong if you decide to go this route. But if you want to stick with a PHP framework – CakePHP seems to be the route to go!