[leo8080]

Hi guys!!!

I am about to start working on a website (taking a deep breath!), but i don't know which language/technology is the best suited to the website.

The website:
A basic user posting website, where users posts a message. A little like e-bay but no payment. Each post may have one or more images and some text.

Hopefully there will be 1000's of posts.

I have some experience of PHP so thats one option. However, i have noticed sites like ebay aren't written in PHP. Not sure what is useed for large sites like those.

Any suggestions guys??? I'm no web dev guru so take it easy with the replies.


Kap

My 1st post btw

[datahound]

Welcome Leo.

I would choose PHP with mySQL because that is what I know.

If things start to get as big as ebay remember the DBs are exportable and reusable in any other platform.

PHP is industrial strength enough for most things.

This site is PHP and it takes a dreadful hammering.

The speed and size of your hosting is the issue as things get bigger.

[leo8080]

Thanks Datahound.

When you say
"The speed and size of your hosting is the issue as things get bigger"
are there any guidelines around this - maybe 'when your database is greater than XmB then you should consider alternate technologies'?

[datahound]

Most hosting is on shared servers. If you got huge you would probably want to go for a server package of your own.

This does not mean change from PHP, but if your server is too slow with shared traffic you could not keep up with the pace and the site would crash or slow down so much as to become useless.

[leo8080]

the penny has dropped - PHP can basically cope with whatever is thrown at it (unless your a hacker throwing silly things). Where you struggle is the server, and if the server starts struggling you just get a dedicated server.

I get it! THANKS

[Tintin81]

PHP is best for quickly hacking together solutions. Ruby-on-Rails is best for large projects that need to be maintained, changed, etc. in the long run. (My opinion)