Forum Moderators: coopster
Most of the questions we get around here have to do with form mailers and file system reading/writing, dynamic page creation/management and user tracking.
I was wondering more about an overview of what we actually do.
9-5 I develop/maintain/design a large commercial application with php/apache/oracle on sun servers. I think we have 10 servers total - live are sun, dev are freebsd, linux and sun. I work in a team of 9.
spare time - mostly mysql/php on windows and *nix, from individual scripts to application size development. All by my lonesome.
I have worked with php and doing db design and admin for 4 yrs or so.
by the way, no company names ;)
I think those broad categories cover the php coding I've been doing mostly.
As for servers I test and develop on apache under winXP, and rent from a really good host for the actual deployment.
As for what I am hoping to do more of - I want to do some applications in:
- accounting and financial analysis
- statistical analysis
- corporate communications and QA
- html encryption for source code "hiding" (sounds lucrative and rather fun!)
I am a programmer and SysAdmin. I do sysadmin for 2 companies on the side and fulltime for one company that is also a local ISP. I also do the SysAdmin and Programming for my own server that I run a few projects from.
I run linux on around 15 servers and have recently taken over admining 3 Win2K boxes. In September the plans are to add 2 SUN boxes to the mix.
As for PHP. Every site that I manage uses PHP/Apache as the primary Webserver. As for backends. My server along with my current day job is MySQL (though my day job should will be getting Oracle along with the SUN machines soon I'm happy to say) (I Haven't saved enough pennies for my own Oracle). I also manage and program PHP & Oracle at another site. If you have the chance everyone should get a copy :)
Now I know most Linux SysAdmins swear by Bash/Perl but personally I hate Perl. I use Bash for simple simple stuff but quickly switch for PHP for shell scripting for anything more complicated. I was very happy when the PHP group release their CLI since it now gives nicer error messages when run as a CLI :)
I think that about sums it up for me. Hopefully I did not bore anyone with the long post...
daisho
I started in Perl, but for the last few years I've been using PHP (and MySQL) almost exclusively on my sites. I've used PHP for almost everything you'd want to do: lots and lots of content management systems, shopping carts, forums, dynamically generated and database driven pages, reporting, database frontends (like account management systems), simple and complex forms of course, that kind of stuff. All my sites use templates for separating layout/designs from content - even on the small simple five-page "static" sites - which makes management much easier.
I use FreeBSD/Apache on the servers (just switched from Linux) and Mac OS X on the desktop - though lately I do the majority of coding directly on the server.
On my own time, I also run a few domains where I have PHP, Apache, and PostgreSQL. Most of those are relatively simple sites where the PHP is pretty basic - just a way to keep a uniform look and feel across a set of pages, without any database access. One of those has a form that just gets fed to mail(). Another (and soon a second) has an application-sized community system written in PHP that couldn't exist without the Postgres back-end. That still has one segment, a procmail filter, written in Perl, but that is going to be re-written in PHP.
I know I haven't even touched the surface of what it can do but I have to balance my curiosity with making a living.
I use it for :
-Data analysis
-Data manipulation
-Journal-style written program to log things I do at work
-Mass file editing (adding one line to a batch of files at once)
-XML validator
-XML generator
-Link checker
-File generation
-Photo gallery
And probably a million other things as well, but those are just the things off the top of my head.
-panic
I mostly use PHP for interaction with MySQL, yet I also find it very useful for [b]form-mailers, image manipulation, hit counters, and manipulating data from other types of databases.
It's funny, you can do the same things with PERL, yet I find PHP easier to understand...probably because it was the first server-side language I learned. except for the little bit of ASP I learned when I had to.
Cheers,
BM
Thought you might need a newbies perspective: I use PHP for mail forms and I've also used it for a member/login system.
I'm learning still, with the aim of creating professonal CMS for my clients. This is still a long way off. But so far, I've found it quite intuitive, and easier to pick up than other languages.
PHP is about 40 times easier to understand than Perl. But when dealing with large files (such as 20+ meg log files), perl is faster by far!
-panic
As far as first language learned I started with C/C++, VB, COBOL, Assembler and the first db I learned with was Oracle. The first scripting language was Perl.
Though when I started working with mysql and then php it seemed to fit quite well.
I'm envious! One of these days I hope to learn C++ as I see how I could use it to power my own custom shopping carts at a level I can't achieve with PHP.
But you are quite right. We each use PHP in a variety of ways. I'm still discovering all of the neat things that folks are using it for. Take for example when BT shared a peek at the tools he's built for the backend of WebmasterWorld. Big flash-bulbs triggered and I said to myself "hmmm...I'll bet I could build..."
just been php-ing for 3 months and already have some scripts up and working on site including a search script and a reviews script, allowing visitors to post their reviews, which then have to be ok'ed by us before going live.
i am half way through a content management system allowing our clients to update bits of their own websites.
and have already made plans to change our entire static behemoth of a site into a slick and speedy dynamic one this winter.
most of all i am looking forward to making my life as a webmaster much easier with regard to site maintenance, this also includes allowing non-html'ers to update and maintain bits of the site (instead of yours truly)
php is the first 'proper' language i have learned (html doesn't count ;-) and it has completely changed the way i think about our sites.
what lorax says about balancing "my curiosity with making a living" absolutely goes for me too, so i can't see myself getting into some of the apps which are listed above, but you never know.... ;-)
