handling things CF sucked at like large file-uploads etc), with near
exclusivity. And my new job is a CF focused job and I appreciate the
power of CF to perform a lot of complex tasks with general ease.
Over the past few months though, I've started getting into PHP more and
more. I've done this mostly out of an interest to participate in some
open source and free software projects. PHP has a lot of quirks and its
vocabulary of functions and variables is a hodge-podge of contributions
from a variety of sources-- making it a bit more confusing to master
than CF's generally consistent approach at naming conventions.
However-- when choosing what platform to suggest to new clients for my
freelance work, I have found that I generally have to recommend
PHP/MySQL over CF/SQL-Server 99% of the time now. For the following
reasons.
Hosting services providing PHP/MySQL on Apache are universally cheap and
ubiquitous. This is of course because they are all free technologies,
which also means I don't have to shell out a grand every time I need a
new version of CF or SQL Server or Windows Server for my dev environment
to stay current.
PHP contains several functions for manipulating graphics for things like
fast thumb-nailing, PDF generation, file-compression/zip, and a host of
things that one still has to pay a fortune for in custom components to
3rd parties when trying to get them for a CF environment. PHP can do
all the protocol stuff (HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP) and file-uploads, that
USED to differentiate CF from the pack in terms of ease of use. And it
does so much more. Add to that the impossibility or extra expense for
getting a dedicated server should you want custom components installed
at your CF webhost. Finally, there are a lot of great web app solutions
out there for free in PHP for instant deployment of complex sites with
minimal tweaking.
I'm not saying that PHP is the enterprise solution catch-all-- its not.
But it is worth a look if you want to broaden your skills and your
potential audience/client-base. And for those of you who don't want to
charge your clients less just because the server software costs nothing,
you can always pocket the difference for yourself.
Brendan avery || [EMAIL PROTECTED] || www.brendanavery.com
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