I'm not much of a PHP guy. In fact, I avoid it whenever I can. But, my church is hosting their website on a great linux provider, which has provided great service for us for the past few years. The linux server uses ChiliSoft ASP (apparently now owned by Sun... That's interesting), which also is a nifty little implementation of ASP for linux.
The only problem is, every six months or so, the ASP service on the linux box hangs. Not a big deal, I just fire off a little e-mail to the help desk, and they have it back up and running. That is, if I check every day. Since I'm a forgetful webmaster, I don't, and sometimes these things go unnoticed. Plus, now that we've jumped in traffic since offering podcasting, we can't really afford to have the site go down.
Well, it's time for an overhaul. The site hasn't been touched in 3 or 4 years. Yes, we've made minor improvements, but it's time for a complete overhaul. So, after working with the staff, as well as the graphic designer in our congregation, we have an awesome looking site. I even put it into Flash. Dynamic XML and all. So, the site has a 58k footprint (awesome for dial-up), and only about 2 k of text loads for each page (if that). Incredible. Fast, etc. SWEET.
Well, to get the data in and out from the DB, I didn't want to rely on the slightly unreliable ASP, so I decided to write the data layer in PHP. It's Picky. That's all I have to say. Makes me thankful that I'm not a C# programmer (case sensitivity). 
Anyway. I'll post when the site is finished. Should be "live" around January 8th.
Print | posted on Monday, December 19, 2005 9:06 PM