Do i have a bad site?

[dave01]

Hi - i was wondering if anyone could offer me assistance / advice regarding a website i commissioned. The original programmer wants to leave the project without finishing what was agreed and he has recieved a substantial amout of money up to this point. I have a feeling the code used and the method of implementation has not been that good so i have site that isn't so great. If i detail the facts that i know currently about what i have (well don't have as on programmer's server)

So the agreement was to build a site that was modular and scaleable so another programmer could work on it!

Used PHP 4.1 / 4.3 (admitted in some places the code is old and would be difficult for another programmer to work on it)
MYSQL 3.23

MYPHPAdmin (something like that) - i think from the year 2003

PHP and HTML is mixed together? (if there was no spec does, does this a good excuise for programmer to go down this route of mixing HTML & PHP? - the site is a complex one)

Built on his machine which i think is a linux but when uploads to server he has to change a few things as the set up is different - should he be making these two environments the same?

We had no spec - but both knew this from the outset - just visuals etc

Thanks in advance for any advice i recieve

[redbullmarky]

[!--quoteo(post=365644:date=Apr 17 2006, 08:43 PM:name=davey01)--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(davey01 @ Apr 17 2006, 08:43 PM) [snapback]365644[/snapback][/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
Used PHP 4.1 / 4.3 (admitted in some places the code is old and would be difficult for another programmer to work on it)
MYSQL 3.23
[/quote]
anything php 4.x upwards is fine. i'm still on php 4 mysql at the moment. i'm on mysql 4, but i don't actually have any sql that wouldnt work on 3.23 (i initially developed most of my sites whilst still on mysql 3.23). depends how complex it is.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
MYPHPAdmin (something like that) - i think from the year 2003
[/quote]
same here. most of the changes over phpmyadmins lifetime are for cleaning up/optimizing etc and cosmetic. otherwise, even the old version does its job well.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
PHP and HTML is mixed together? (if there was no spec does, does this a good excuise for programmer to go down this route of mixing HTML & PHP? - the site is a complex one)
[/quote]
there's nothing wrong with that. sometimes its unavoidable. if the idea is to make it modular, then as long as the functions that pull all the parts together are structured correctly as agreed (ie, the include files) then it shouldn't be too difficult to decipher what's going on for another programmer. if he hasn't left yet, maybe you should get him to do a handover/overview of what he's done so far.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]
Built on his machine which i think is a linux but when uploads to server he has to change a few things as the set up is different - should he be making these two environments the same?
[/quote]
again, there's nothing wrong with developing on a linux machine and uploading it to a windows server and vice versa, in which case certain adjustments may need to be made. quite often, i also have my local testing server different to the 'live' server in terms of setup, as my local server has all the error reporting turned on, which you don't necessarily want to have on a live server.

TBH without seeing the code or the site, it's hard to answer your question properly.
hope it helps a bit tho
Mark