Brandito520

Well, I know this probably isn't the most logical forum to start a discussion of PHP vs Perl, but I don't know of another place to ask. I am a new programmer, and need to find a language to learn and stick with. So I am looking for some opinions on the pro's and con's of the two languages, if you use / have used both then thats even better. A couple of things that have stood out to me are that Perl has been around since '87, is fully OO, and also that Perl is pretty much a prerequisite of a Linux server as common things like cPanel are written in Perl. I am not real worried about one learning curve being longer than the other, but between the two I've heard that Perl is harder to learn. Either way if Perl is harder to learn but will in the end be better to know, then I would rather learn it now than have to learn 2 languages. Please no kool-aid "PHP Rules" or "Perl owns" responses, keep it constructive. - Brandon

Hey, sorry for the delayed reply, I've been out of town. Thanks for the tips, but I don't think I could really pull it off manually. I would have no idea how to setup a cron job, and really don't know how to use the command line... I want to learn though. And I'm looking into getting Red Hat Training: https://www.redhat.com/training/ What do you guys think of the RHCE, certification? Or even then RHCT?

If your going to use OS Commerce get ready for some headaches... I've looked at some of the code, and it is pretty horrible and would probably be hard to integrate than writing your own shopping cart. If your just going to use PayPal you could also consider using PayPal's shopping cart: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_shoppingcart-intro-outside

I'm actually looking into getting training from Zend also. Not for certification, but just to learn PHP, and program personal projects. Have you taken any course from them?

Well said, Daniel, it really is pretty pathetic how oversold shared accounts are. I truely don't understand how those companies get away with such low service quality, completely overloading their servers putting hundreds and hundreds of accounts on each one. And extending your example, setting aside the physical limits of the network uplink, just think of the cost of that kind of bandwidth! Softlayer, a huge multimillion dollar host, recently signed a 3 year contract for a 10Ge internet line with Internap for $80,000 a month. Which comes out to $8 per Mbps, which most hosts won't even be able to get, but using that example of unlimited bandwidth (on a 10 Mbps line) it would cost Host Rocket $80 (With the rates they probably get it would most likely be more like $150 though) a month just in bandwidth alone to power an account they sell for $5. For anyone looking for a VPS, I highly recommend WiredTree... Their great in every possible way. And notice how thats not an affiliate link , I just like the company. By the way, Daniel, who do you host with and whats your site(s)?

Well, I suppose that is also an option. But I would greatly prefer the automatic backups. The major advantage to the automatic backups that I see is the ammount of backups you can have going, that would be completely unpractical to attempt to do manually. Here is an example policy, from R1Soft: synchronize every 10 minutes – retain the last 48 recovery points synchronize hourly – retain the last 48 recovery points synchronize daily at midnight – retain the last 7 recovery points synchronize weekly on Sundays – retain the last 4 recovery points synchronize monthly on the 1st – retain the last 48 recovery points Clearly this provides extremely up-to-date backups, all without having to even press a button. And with the integration with Amazon S3, I can host my back-ups off site for just a couple bucks a month. In reviewing other backup services besides R1Soft though, Zmanda seems promising. Why do people always get deadlocked in those kind of arguements? People should just research and decide whatever option / software suits there project best, and not be such kool-aid drinkers.

Crayon Violent: Yeah, Zend was one of my top choices for PHP training. But one thing about buying the training direct from them is that it seems they just sub-contract out their training to third parties anyway. With PHP Architect being one of the training partners, so I figured if I could get the same traing direct from PHP Architect for about $500 to $700 less than Zend, heck why not? Thorpe: Excellent point.

I guess I was just lost... I don't think I'll be implementing Memcache quite yet though, as it is just one more thing I will need to learn and implement in my project. Once I get some traffic and my site is stable its definitely something I want to look into though. After looking at a few other things though, I'm not sure if I want to go with PostgreSQL... The backup software I'm looking at: R1Soft CDP, only supports MySQL for the database backups. Maybe I just need to keep looking for a solution that will work with PGSQL for backups...

Thanks for the replies everyone. It seems almost nobody (although many had been previously coding other languages) got training. Is PHP really that easy to pickup? I had figured I would need to get training just to get a basic understanding of the language... Maybe I was wrong. Brandon

Hi, Thanks for the reply btherl. I don't completely understand the functions in the lacks for PGSQL (Still pretty new to the coding world), but I don't expect a spoon-feeding and I will research it more to see if it will be applicable to my project. About the Memcache layer though I found to seemingly similar results on Google, are you suggesting I install Memcached (http://www.danga.com/memcached/) or are you referring the built-in Memcache (http://us2.php.net/memcache) functions of PHP and interjecting them into the core PHP development? Or am I just confused about something? Regards, Brandon

Howdy, I am in the process of making a new website, and I'm kinda at a crossroads of how to go forward with the project. I need to decide if it would be better to get training on how to program myself, or hire out the programming. And I'm not talking about just skimming over the PHP manual, I am talking about true training. Like from Zend, or PHP Architect. I like the long term benefit of this, since if I got to a professional level of programming I could just program anything I wanted and wouldn't have to pay someone for every little tweak to the website. So heres the question... How did you learn to program PHP? Did you take any professional classes? Regards, Brandon

I have tried a lot of hosts, and 100% hands-down WiredTree takes the cake. Best support I've ever had, quick network and great customer portal. But if your looking for something un-managed, then check out SoftLayer. They take the cake on the un-managed side. www.wiredtree.com www.softlayer.com

Howdy, I'm in the very early stages of gathering information for a web project I am trying to develop. It is going to be a classified ads website, think autotrader.com - but better and more user friendly. I have pretty much singled in on PostgreSQL over MySQL. It seems a lot of experienced programmers truely prefer it, but there are so many different releases of PGSQL I am not sure which one to go with... so far I have found: EnterpriseDB, Greenplum Database, Mammoth PostgreSQL and of course the standard www.postgresql.com release. Are there really any advantages to the other / commercial versions? What do you guys use and recommend? Also, something that is a bit concerning is that in looking over the PHP manual there seems to be a lot less PGSQL functions and support over MySQL. Has the MySQL layer of PHP just become bloated, or is PostgreSQL not supported very well by PHP? Have you ever run into anything you couldn't do with PGSQL, that you could with MySQL? Regards, Brandon