One question that keeps being asked about IndicThreads.com is that how
come you are running on PHP when you are supposed to be a Java J2EE
portal?
Honestly, we would have loved to be on Java and be able to experiment on the site using Java software and also keep generating in house articles about how we manage IndicThreads using X component and how we upgraded to Y server and so on.
However going with a Java Content Management
System (CMS) wasn’t the best option for us at the time we launched and I am not sure if it still is.? While creating IndicThreads, we tried out and compared several CMSs from the Java as well as the PHP stable. Based on those learnings, below is an attempt to list some of the points that I think make PHP CMSs a better choice than the Java ones:
- Evolved:
The PHP CMSs seemed far more evolved. Mambo, PostNuke, Drupal all have huge communities and have been around for quite some time. They are also running on thousands of sites and so are very well tested. - Ease of Use:
PHP CMSs are remarkably easy to use. In 15 minutes time, even a PHP illiterate person can get a site going . I doubt if that can be done with a Java CMS. - Hosting:
Java hosting is not only costly but it is also a specialized segment. Not many hosting providers understand how Java J2EE web applications are deployed. Apache + PHP is so common that even the small hosting companies are good at it and can fix issues in no time. - Sleek:
Some Java CMSs are 10 times bigger and more complex than the popular PHP ones. If you know HTML, you can more or less figure out how a PHP CMS is working. That also makes tweaking the CMS a fairly simple task. - Community:
The community? around Java is one of its strong points but PHP CMS also have huge community bases and so getting help from fellow users is simple. - Non Issues:
Even if we presume that PHP cannot match Java in terms of scalability, object orientation…. it wouldn’t matter much to most website creators. Having a good, simple, feature rich, easy to host and maintain site, are the things that matter most.
As of today, the PHP CMSs seem to have convincingly beaten the Java ones.
Maybe while the Java world was engaged in talking of high end, super techie stuff, with the words ‘enterprise’, ‘transactions’ and ‘SOA ‘embedded in every sentence, the PHP guys actually went out and created a lot of simple yet very useful software.
>> PHP CMS: http://www.opensourcecms.com/
>> Java CMS: http://java-source.net/open-source/content-managment-systems
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Editor: Harshad Oak
Hi.
I found interesting link:
[URL=http://demo.webdevelopers.cz]XUL powered Elixon CMS[/URL]
It is exactly what I need – I’m good in photoshop and CSS… but I don’t understand Java and PHP and…
Does anybody know what is their licensing scheme? And can somebody recommend me similar product? I prefer OS/free…
oscar
Hi guys! For open source software such as blogs, content management system (CMS), e-learning, forum, FAQ system, etc – check out http://www.webopensource.com
Hmm http://www.sourgeforge.net is nice but difficult to navigate somehow
Have fun
[URL=http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hull_asp.html]PHP vs .Net by Oracle[/URL]
http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hull_asp.html
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2004/07/15/UpgradePHP5.html
I’ve heard so much about Java being better for enterprise systems and php is better for smaller systems – well this is absolute rubish. I have been developing in php for 6 years now, with some co-workers developing in Java.
It is true that Java forces a cetain coding convention and that everyting is OO making maintenance easier – php allows you to do almost anything, mixing OO with conventional coding practices and allowing you apply clever new solutions which big OO frameworks just does not cater for.
Fact: I have build huge enterprise solution with PHP for bluechip corporates, some bigger than the Java ones. When developing large systems using PHP you obviously need good experience in business systems (like with everything else) – PHP is still faster to develop, faster on performance, lower on system resources, and less of a nightmare to maintain(if developed by a professional), one is able to write 10 lines of code in php that is the equivelant of 60 lines of Java or .net – dont take my word for it, just go have a look at the thousands of companies that is switching to PHP – true genius lies in simplicity, always has
I work in the web site development area during several years. Under my management the many success projects ware produced. They were Perl, ASP, PHP, Java based graphical web sites and complicated web applications. The abilities of PHP technologies (Smarty, PEAR, etc.) are really suitable for simple graphical web sites. The PHP development process is quicker than at Java. In this case PHP requires less hardware resources at hosting machines. The hosting price is lower. The hourly rate of PHP developers is lower.
However if we develop web application with complicated business logic we understand that PHP is ?child?s toy?. The problems of PHP are appeared when we need not-standard functionality which is not provided by PHP extension, for example full text search (including search inside text documents: DOC, PDF, Excel, PowerPoint etc.) on several languages. Another big problem of PHP is maintenance. The PHP does not ?force? developers to use abstractions and design patterns (especially in case of using cheap PHP developers). Usually web applications are grown. For example in case of usual PHP applications you can have big problems during porting your application from MySQL to Oracle DBMS. Of course in case of java you can also have nasty (not extendable) source code, but using Java it is easier to write good code. The quality is corner stone of PHP. Have you ever seen so rich testing environment for PHP which has Java?
According above reasons I decided to develop my own multilingual free Java CMS with full text search – AtLeap. You can find information about it at site
[URL=https://atleap.dev.java.net]https://atleap.dev.java.net[/URL]
Conclusions: PHP CMS is suitable for simple graphical web sites (usually for projects less than 100 man/hours). Java CMS is suitable for web applications with complicated business logic (usually for projects between 100 and 1000 man/hours). If your project is more than 1000 man/hours I recommend to use commercial CMS under commercial application server and database.
Andrey Grebnev
[URL=http://www.blandware.com]http://www.blandware.com[/URL]
And by the way, not to be able to realize architectures based on concepts like SOA is no reason to use terms like ’super techie stuff’. SOA is a concept independent of the language. You surely can implement a SOA in PHP, but you wouldn’t. So if you hava to do so (heterogenous applications and databases) you implement technologies that support your claim but i forgot, the topic is cms.
just have a look at the references, java is good for sustainable industry solutions (mostly commercial
), php is good for my grandma’s homepage, sorry 
. >>>Some Java CMSs are 10 times bigger and more complex than the popular PHP ones. NO: Complexity isn’t the characteristic of php or java. Complexity is founded on the claim of your cms. Please show me a implementation of content repositories in php. And please show me a php cms that deserves the attribute document oriented
So I was way off the money on my opinion on whether Apache would host a Java implementation.
Seems it’s going to happen:
http://blogs.cocoondev.org/dims/archives/003095.html
One of my chief concerns was that Apache does not have a lot of people with combined C and Java experience and it looks like the Harmony project has solved this by involving other JVM/J2SE projects in the planning and coding.
Another was that there already were implementations out there, and this is solved by the same act of getting them on board.
There also seems to be a strong aim to make the Apache structure a super-structure that other communities can use with parts replaced that they want to specialize in.
I’m especially impressed to see Doug Lea as a supporter. He seems to have done a very good job in becoming an item of trust for every developer in the community, so his support speaks volumes.
(Good to hear from you Daniel
)
Henri Yandell
I just compared Lenya vs TYPO3 at the documentation level. I think both are suitable but Lenya would be more useful to strenght my skill for industrial devolpment so I actual think to start with the J2EE Framework. TYPO3 Templates are very proprietary while the Cocoon bases Lenya use the entire XML/XSL Stack.
There is such an amazing amount to say on this topic (most of it complete and utter rubish). But this article really shows the facts. Showing J2EE the love is always awesome, but when you resort to bad spelling and the use of ‘U’ rather then ‘you’, its just pathetic and an embarrassment to the J2EE community.
PHP works and it is very simple. I agree.
But simply saying that J2EE doesn’t work is not a fair sentence. You’re simply going against the entire industry, including commercial vendors and the open source community. Friend, it seems you like PHP so much. I like too, but don’t be so passionate. Life is bigger.
Both PHP and J2EE have their places, like Python, Perl, etc. And they can live with each other.
This is the kind of thing that place the open source initiative behind proprietary solutions.
Please, let’s discuss the best use of each plataform/language to not berry J2EE and PHP in favor of MS .Net (even .Net has its territory).
As a bottom line, there are good products written in J2EE, PHP and Python for the Portal/CMS arena. Their adoption depends mainly to the business requirements to address.
Sincerely,
Andre.
PHP works and it is very simple. I agree.
But simply saying that J2EE doesn’t work is not a fair sentence. You’re simply going against the entire industry, including commercial vendors and the open source community. Friend, it seems you like PHP so much. I like too, but don’t be so passionate. Life is bigger.
Both PHP and J2EE have their places, like Python, Perl, etc. And they can live with each other.
This is the kind of thing that place the open source initiative behind proprietary solutions.
Please, let’s discuss the best use of each plataform/language to not berry J2EE and PHP in favor of MS .Net (even .Net has its territory).
As a bottom line, there are good products written in J2EE, PHP and Python for the Portal/CMS arena. Their adoption depends mainly to the business requirements to address.
Sincerely,
Andre.
Rather than relying on personal opinion, perhaps we should all watch the market. PHP based solutions are proliferating at an amazing rate. You have stated the reasons, and I agree with you. You gotta luv Java, but . . .
Jim Cassidy
http://jimcassidy.ca
I agree that PHP much easyier to understand. In java if you want to explained abaout object presistence you need to read a lot of documentation. In PHP you can describe it in one page. See it your self at http://www.haltebis.com/presistence_object/
Just perhaps try Jahia (www.jahia.org)… Looks like easy to install and quite ergonomic + includes both a portal and a CMS.
With CMSes, it is either PHP CMS based site or no site.
A very very minute number of software folk can manage to create and deploy a J2EE based site. While almost any software developer (even web designers) can create a PHP CMS based site, only a Java J2EE experienced person can create a J2EE based site. So the ratio might be 100:1 in favor of PHP.
So PHP works. J2EE is super, amazing, awesome… but is doesn’t work
I looked at PHP and Java, but found Plone to have much more flexibility and functionality
Hi
Every one here , I suggest you take a look at
http://www.jetNuke.org , its going to be PHPNuke clone in java.
I have only looked cursory at Java CMS systems since there are so many PHP ones myself. I happen to be one of those small hosting companies you mention in my night job with my day job being a Java developer. It is interesting to note though that the company I work for is finalizing its selection of a commercial Java CMS to run on top of WebSphere and is JSR-170 compliant. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Back to PHP, I have to agree completely about its ease. I started using it at first a bit reluctantly to build a dynamic site for a customer and I really like it now to the point that I almost wouldn’t mind building a ‘large’ app with it just to see it in action. With PHP’s growing support of OOP, template systems and such and the fact that it is just plain fast has me excited about it. It seems sometimes that the java community gets overly excited and into heated debates about frameworks and which is better and all that instead of just using what is appropriate for the job at hand. This is also happening with scripting in the java community.
With IBM starting to support PHP via Zend and projects like SugarCRM coming along, maybe PHP will get a bigger piece of the pie.
I personally like that you are using Mambo as I’m evaluating it also for building customer sites. I am working on one now that will be using IntegraMOD (built on phpBB), but I like Mambo’s potential.
If you want to brag more about your use of Mambo, let me know as I would like to hear from real users.
Robert
robert@bull-enterprises.com
Point taken. Yes, I have only discussed open source CMSs.
Our experiments were pretty much restricted to the free and open-source options from both Java and PHP. If anybody wants to share some info about non open source CMSs, please do. U could ofcourse blog as part of the [URL=http://indicthreads.com/contest/140/Best_Java_Blogger.html]Best Java Blogger Contest[/URL].
Also it would be good if you register and post your comment or at least state your name in the comment. Comments from real people instead of guests are more credible and fun.
I don’t agree with your statements.
The deployment of a J2EE cms can be just as easy as a PHP one. All a user has to do is upload the war (tomcat) or ear (jboss) file to the webserver and the file is deployed by the Application Server.
Installing a CMS on a database could work perfectly when it works with an XML file for the data.
The argument that editing a PHP page is simpler isn’t true at all. In Java there are numerous template engines that are far superior to the ones in PHP. A template page in Java has the same structure as an XML document, so it’s editable with your favorite ascii editor.
You are not really talking about PHP vs Java CMS’s. You are talking about *OpenSource* CMS’s, and only that (it seems). Commercial Java CMS’s is a whole other story.
You are right , and you choiced a great cms (mambo)