Do I Need Framework Or Cms ?

[martvefun 0]

Hello,I'm managing the website of the student association I'm in (aiesec).The website counts a few tens of pages, it has a simple forum, a few forms, a news system, an admin area. It's visited by sometimes more than 100 person (during events or when we are advertising).Now I want to develop an better member area to share files. So I need to work on an better authorisation system (different levels) and stuff like that.There is a recurring problem with PHP in my opinion, is that the code start quickly to become disgusting (if we can say that code is disgusting ^^) and not clear. You are mixing the interface part and the treatment part.I've a little bit work with django which has a great template system. With PHP, I'm doing "echo" everywhere and I'm easily mixing everything.I've never used that but I think that a framework or a CMS could help me.I search a little bit on internet and found Drupal but I'm still not sure if I should use itI like the "do it yourself" but sometimes it's time to stop reinvent the wheel in worse.Do you advice to keep doing it myself ? and them what do you advice me to do to keep my code "nice" ?Or do you advice me to use a framework or CMS ? which one ?Thank you

[StvenWesley 0]

Both Framework and CMS have some limited functions to establish a personally website, in my eyes. many CMS is open resource, though you can edit codes yourself, it is just a template and you can not do much.Actually Search Engine doesn't like Framework based websites, though it is easy to use. However in the comparison, I would like to use CMS. For me, I like to write websites myself, using DIV+CSS and Javascript,PHP.The database is Mivrosoft Access or SQL Server. :angel:

[k_nitin_r 8]

Hi martvefun!I've heard quite a bit about the AIESEC - I'm assuming that you are referring to the "Association Internationale des ?tudiants en Sciences ?conomiques et Commerciales". I had an acquaintance who worked with the organization while they were setting up an office in the UAE.On just about any web development platform, including PHP, if you are building in custom functionality, such as a web-based application, to do something, you would need a web development framework, else a content management system (CMS) would suffice. Managing code on your own would have to be carefully planned and structured for future extensibility, but if you would like to build web applications like most of the web developers all over the world, pick a framework such as Code Igniter, Symphony, or CakePHP, or one among the many others that are out there. Using a web development framework is a no-brainer approach to structuring source code.Drupal is a pretty neat content management system and it handles multi-lingual websites with relative ease. For an international organization, such as the AIESEC, with visitors from all across the globe, you would probably have each page in a different language depending on where the user is from. All you need to do is create a web page in one language, and use the Translate option to get the content management system to remind you to create pages for other languages. If you do not wish to create a page in multiple languages, such as when all you have is a set of images, you can define the page as a language neutral page. Theming Drupal is one of the easier things that you can accomplish and Drupal has quite a large community to support individuals or organizations who adopt it to meet their needs. Drupal also has an add-on forum that can provide you with basic message board functionality.If you would like to try a simple content management system, you can have a go at using WordPress. It is a rather simple blogging engine but you can use it as a content management system. Just as Drupal does, it supports two kinds of articles - posts (the equivalent of Drupal's story articles) and pages (the equivalent of Drupal's pages, as the name suggests). WordPress comes in different flavors, such as the WordPress Multi User edition that can host multiple blogs or websites, while the regular version of WordPress can host a single blog or a website and would have to be installed for each additional blog or website that you would like to host. Drupal and Joomla support multiple blogs/websites and do not have single-website/blog editions.Joomla is yet another alternative to Drupal and provides you with a lot of customization right out of the box. Before you even begin to hire a web designer to re-do the layout for you, you might want to take a look at the settings that Joomla provides for configuring the different blocks - the home page layout has the main content area divided into two columns and a configuration setting enables you to set a certain number of articles as featured articles that are displayed across two columns while other articles are displayed in a single column. You can configure the display of the print/PDF icons on the article previews too. Joomla has the backing of a lot of commercial organizations and therefore you would find many commercial components that you can add into Joomla for additional functionality, such as for setting up e-commerce web store fronts and for multi-lingual website support.BTW, if you would like to have help with the website, there are a bunch of do-gooders active on the forum and can help you out with your pursuit. Have PC, will code seems to be the motto for most people, though there may be a couple of Mac users on the forum too.@StvenWesleyHey Steven!I'm actually quite surprised that you decided to go with Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL Server as the database for your PHP-based web applications. Most of the open-source PHP applications that I use primarily support MySQL and Postgresql and the community around those projects is very hostile to the use of either Access or SQL Server, primarily because they are Microsoft-owned. It's probably one of the 'evils' of the open-source community in that we initally set out to seek open-ness but that eventually turned into an open-for-everybody-except-Microsoft community. The anti-Microsoft sentiment is pretty common in the open-source development communities though many of the open-source developers I know are Microsoft developers... it helps put food on the table, and that's all that I can say for myself and for those other developers, because when the night falls, we write code, check it into subversion or git, and drive the open-source software projects that we contribute to.The firm I work at would kill to have an equivalent of the open-source applications that would run in ASP.NET, preferably with C# source code, and with a Microsoft SQL Server database because the infrastructure folk are point-and-click trained and can't manage a Linux box. Perhaps there are a couple of Linux distributions out there that provide a comprehensive graphical user interface to cover all of the configuration settings that can be made for Apache, PHP, and MySQL, but the licensing and subscription cost for those commercially supported distributions is comparable to that of a Microsoft Windows Server license, so using Windows on the servers is a no-brainer for them. Besides, it's easier and cheaper to hire folk to run the Windows servers than it is to hire Linux/UNIX server administrators.

[martvefun 0]

@k_nitin_r : thank you for this long answer
yes you are right about aiesec, I'm member of the group of AIESEC in Belgium

I don't need to support several languages, we are doing everything in english (easier)

On the articles I read on the internet, Drupal seems to be the thing for me. Easily customisable and not too hard to understand.

I had already a small experience with wordpress (I had a blog with it but finally I moved to Dotclear which is basically the same). Anyway here I want a bit more than what wordpress is made for (even if you extends to his limit by adding a lot of plugins)

Concerning Joomla, I heard often that it's hard to manage the templates and buggy sometimes

I've been asking the same question on other forum and the main advice was to keep doing it myself
usually, we told me that the problem with a cms is that it's too difficult to adapt to what you need if you don't make a "usual" website (blog, presentation,...)

I think I'll try to do a small project with drupal on my computer and if I like it I'll adapt the aiesec website to it but for now I'll keep doing it by myself

[Quatrux 4]

A PHP framework is just a framework, using a PHP framwork you can write your own CMS which requires quite a lot of PHP knowledge and that framework knowledge, where a PHP CMS is already a content management system with which you can create your website using simple steps.Drupal and Joomla seems to be the most popular CMS, but usually you don't need them, especially Joomla which is slow and is to powerful for most of users.

Edited March 8, 2010 by Quatrux (see edit history)