Building Dynamic Webpages: Alternatives to Coldfusion

[FrostScYthe]

I'm trying to build a Dynamic webpage, I tried with Dreamweaver and Coldfusion, but Coldfusion is kind of confusing, isn't there other software out there that can do this too. Or do you know of other alternatives?

Thanks in advance,

FrostScYthe

 

[mdj]

There are loads of ways to do this, Cold fusion is as far as I know not very used
Instead PHP (www.php.net) is a nice free alternative and most webhosts supports the use of it.
As a little warning you need to learn some programming no matter what you choose, but as a rule there is a lot of examples and ready-to-run websites you can download for free.
Anyway here is a small list of commonly used platforms: ASP, ASP.net, PHP, Phyton, JSP and the old and once much used CGI.
Try to google them I would say that PHP is by far the most used because it's free, but I use ASP myself which is a windows-only technology. But it all really depend on what you have experience with already, so tell a bit about what you want to do with it.

 

[dduardo]

mdj, it's Python not Phyton.

In terms of web scripting languages PHP is a good choice.

You can actually run a dynamic site on your computer by installing a webserver like Apache:

http://httpd.apache.org/

Then install php:

http://www.php.net/

You do need to read the php instructions to configure apache to run php.

 

[ComputerGeek]

I'm trying to build a Dynamic webpage, I tried with Dreamweaver and Coldfusion, but Coldfusion is kind of confusing, isn't there other software out there that can do this too. Or do you know of other alternatives?
Thanks in advance,
FrostScYthe

Turbogears!

it is a python web framework it is like Ruby on Rails, but it is python and done better (IMHO)

 

[dduardo]

Turbogears is a very new product. I would suggest Zope because it has many more features and has been around longer.

 

[ComputerGeek]

Turbogears is a very new product. I would suggest Zope because it has many more features and has been around longer.

TG is made from CherryPY, SQLObject, KID, and Mochikit. there is nothing young about this software except for the tools they are making to help developers tie all the tech together (and it works damn well)

 

[-Job-]

It depends on what server you have. If you have linux you should go with PHP, JSP or CGI. If you have windows, since it has IIS included by all means go with ASP or ASP.NET, Visual Studio makes it very easy to create web applications. You can also easily install PHP to work with IIS, on the other hand JSP requires Apache and integration with IIS is messy and unefficient. I recommend either PHP or ASP.NET, don't bother with ColdFusion/CGI because they're either not free, or they're less intuitive (don't know about python)
To me it sounds like you're just getting started with web development, it's important to know the difference between client and server scripts, what you use them for and what alternatives you have for each. Programs like Dreamweaver are great for building static webpages and offer some help in server-side scripting as well, but you really have to know the language. You also shouldn't restrict yourself to Macromedia Programs, all you really need is notepad. Of course some editors will make your life easier, but don't let that determine which language you'll use. There's good editors for most languages.

 

[ComputerGeek]

It depends on what server you have. If you have linux you should go with PHP, JSP or CGI. If you have windows, since it has IIS included by all means go with ASP or ASP.NET, Visual Studio makes it very easy to create web applications. You can also easily install PHP to work with IIS, on the other hand JSP requires Apache and integration with IIS is messy and unefficient. I recommend either PHP or ASP.NET, don't bother with ColdFusion/CGI because they're either not free, or they're less intuitive (don't know about python)
To me it sounds like you're just getting started with web development, it's important to know the difference between client and server scripts, what you use them for and what alternatives you have for each. Programs like Dreamweaver are great for building static webpages and offer some help in server-side scripting as well, but you really have to know the language. You also shouldn't restrict yourself to Macromedia Programs, all you really need is notepad. Of course some editors will make your life easier, but don't let that determine which language you'll use. There's good editors for most languages.

Oh good lord... stay away from ASP. ASP and ASP.NET is only a tool inflicted upon developers who work for companies who seem to think everything MS is the second coming.

If you have windows... install apache... or get rid of windows and install Linux.

PHP will probably be the easiest thing to start with, perl is a good language (but not as useful without a framework like catalyst)

javascript is always handy to know... just try not to use too much.

for editors... on windows.. get notepad++ (colorization of programing languages makes it nicer to use than notepad)

on Linux, KATE is great, gedit is OK. You can try to learn VIM or EMACS but why bother trying to learn a tool that you need in order to learn a language.

IIS is IMHO, not worth trying to learn. Apache 2 is the way to go.

 

[-Job-]

That's ridiculous, you're ridiculous, no comments.

 

[ComputerGeek]

That's ridiculous, you're ridiculous, no comments.

Care to expound upon that?

 

[-Job-]

I have ASP/ASP.NET, PHP and PERL (though I've never used it) running on IIS 6 and JSP running on Apache Tomcat 5.5 on a Windows Server 2003 machine. I've never had any problems with ASP and because of Visual Studio .NET 2003, which i love, ASP.NET is my server language of choice. I also like PHP and i happen to dislike JSP, but i don't go around saying JSP is for suckers, because in my finite knowledge i admit that there may be scenarios where it can be a good choice, it's only my opinion and i don't force feed it to others. Because Linux & Sun are good and Microsoft is bad, and the anti-MS are so sure of everything, I'm so sick of it. Can you try to have a non-partial opinion?

 

[ComputerGeek]

I have ASP/ASP.NET, PHP and PERL (though I've never used it) running on IIS 6 and JSP running on Apache Tomcat 5.5 on a Windows Server 2003 machine. I've never had any problems with ASP and because of Visual Studio .NET 2003, which i love, ASP.NET is my server language of choice. I also like PHP and i happen to dislike JSP, but i don't go around saying JSP is for suckers, because in my finite knowledge i admit that there may be scenarios where it can be a good choice, it's only my opinion and i don't force feed it to others. Because Linux & Sun are good and Microsoft is bad, and the anti-MS are so sure of everything, I'm so sick of it. Can you try to have a non-partial opinion?

Mostly, Apache is better than IIS and OSS languages are nicer than MS ones because:

1)They are free
2)They are as powerful
3)They are portable
4)The environment is less monolithic

 

[-Job-]

1) Some of us get servers & operating systems for free from Microsoft. If you don't then don't, i wouldn't.
2) Aha
3) You can have ASP.NET in apache.
4) I don't know what you're talking about.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

ASP.NET is best used for enterprise level apps. I'd always go with php for normal web apps.

 

[-Job-]

The only reason for that is that the IIS that ships with non-server windows editions doesn't support as many connections and so you need a server edition (like Windows Server 2003) to have IIS running with full capabilities, and the OS is expensive so mostly only actual companies will consider it. Both IIS and ASP.NET are very easy to learn how to use, and if you can get it for free, then both ASP/ASP.NET and PHP are good options for both large and small projects. I know that if i didn't get the MS stuff for free i'd be running Linux with Apache, but i wouldn't be here saying ASP/ASP.NET & IIS suck either.

 

[dduardo]

Yahoo uses PHP/Python. Google uses Python. Amazon uses Perl. If those aren't "enterprise" enough, I don't know what is.

I wouldn't touch ASP with a ten foot pool, not because it is a bad language, but because it is bound to Windows. Java is more flexible in this respect and so are PHP, Python and Perl.

Personally, I like Python because it is light weight, has a strong object oriented structure, nice syntax and a good C API. Sure Python isn't as fast as Java, but with some C modules, less code and a lot less RAM I get excellent performance. This is exactly what Google does. They write C/C++ and use python as glue. Yahoo uses more PHP than Python, but if you look hard enough you find some good examples (just hover you mouse over the links and see where they lead. You'll find the pages leading to *.py files):

http://yp.yahoo.com/
http://people.yahoo.com/