What web technology to use on my site?

Biggest Piece of the Cake

I think this should have been one of my first posts. If you’re making a web site for your business to showcase your company, etc. you will use XHTML-CSS and JavaScript for best SEO results.

But what if you have a bigger plan? What if you want to build a larger web application? What server-side language will you use?

The only person who can answer that is you. But you must get guidance from an unbiased source. Web developers tend to become fanatics of the language they are used to working with. It turns into a kind of patriotism. People will recommend a lot of web languages and frameworks and pull clients into what they are comfortable working with, as opposed to what the need really is.

You know you’ve picked the right technology to use on your web site if:

• It works without any hitches
• There is tons of help available on the Internet (documentation, forums, communities, open source)
• There are tons of companies / individuals who can take over half-way through the project
• It is the most popular

The last point is stressed because the more popular a technology is, the lesser the chance of you getting into trouble. We don’t want something that, only the person who developed your application and a handful of others know about, do we? We want something that everyone knows about, so we have more options to choose from.

In my opinion, the technology that falls under this category is PHP. This has nothing to do with the fact that I am a PHP developer. I migrated to PHP from ASP.NET because of all of the above mentioned. There are many skeptics and articles all over the Internet that might disagree, but I don’t want to end up red-faced in front of my clients who want more flexibility in developers, and scalability. The fact everyone will agree on, whatever the reasons might be for it, is that the number of PHP developers in the world outnumber any server side language by a HUGE number.

If you are looking to use a web technology in India, you can bet on PHP because it is about to become the largest PHP development community in the world. This means unlimited support and flexibility.

There are newer languages that boast better features, but don’t come close to the market share of PHP.

The closest example I can think of is: Would you pick a Windows PC with all its vulnerabilities and viruses for your office or a Linux-based computer? I’ve used Ubuntu Linux. I’ve never been a bigger Windows fan. I admit Ubuntu is far superior to Windows, but I felt isolated and let-down because Windows boasts a larger market share and all major software run on it perfectly.

In short, it all comes down to:  support and market share. If, in the future, some other technology can boast such a market share, I will migrate to it and recommend it.