php vs html

[BuckfastMonk]

Hi all,

Im having a number of issues getting someone to develop our website in php. The main issue being the price. Now the site itself is fairly small, hosting just over 100 profiles. I was considering adding a members and registration area but I could just continue to collect this content through a form and upload the profiles manually.

My question is this . . . would it be more beneficial with the search engines do continue with the HTML or should I look at implementing PHP?

I would appreciate some feedback on this

Regards,

Ryan

[evilgreenmonkey]

For search engines, the programming language is not important, it's the content and the way in which it's presented which gets you the results. PHP programmers are two-a-penny these days, so try getting some competing quotes from sites such as elance.com and freelancers.net

[wackimonki]

I agree with evilgreenmonkey. In terms of SEO, it's the content that is important.

For maintainability, having a CMS is very important. You do not want to be adding profiles manually, especially if you have any substantial growth planned.

In terms of the cost of a PHP programmer, I've found most try to reinvent the wheel unncessarily. It is much more cost effective getting someone to customize one of the Open Source CMS to your needs. Wordpress is good for blogging and general CMS. Joomla is also very good.

[BuckfastMonk]

thanks for the reply guys, appreciate it

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Hey...Is PHP a totally different programming language (ok html isnt really one)? Because it kind of sounded like that...though Ive always thought it was more something you NEEDED to be able to program if you wanted to create forums and the like? (but then again one of you guys wsa talking about 'implementing' it..so now im a bit confused..)

[egain]

Developing applications using PHP itself does indeed require programming experience, however these days there are a wide number of pre-built (off the shelf ) applications some of which are mentioned above which can be installed fairly easily and allow you to do much of your content yourself without having to create the application in the first place.

Developing an application will give you a greater degree of flexibility to your exact requirements, however there are some very good systems out there worth considering.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

and I can implement those applications that already exist (programmed in PHP) on a website which was created in HTML or XHTML, I assume? thx

[mcanerin]

:D Boy, I'm getting old. I remember when PHP was the new language on the block.

I suspect it's currently the most popular server-side language right now, but there are many options. Anything you can write code in and execute on a server can be used to make webpages, including BASIC, java, javascript, VB, PERL, PYTHON (Which is what Google uses) and anything that can be compiled.

You can also do everything by hand. I do that on my own site (just using includes to make my life easier). For sites that require frequent updating or a database, then it's recommended to use a more dynamic approach.

I would start, from a technical side, with the LAMP system - Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. This offers a very common, inexpensive and powerful setup. There are many other ones, though. A MS based one with IIS, .NET and VB can work very well, and IBM's Tomcat system is fairly nice.

But to a search engine, none of that matters. All that really matters is that the URL can be trusted to not be session-only and that the page can be rendered in a text only browser with client-side scripting off. Everything else is done to make developers lives easier, not for the search engines.

Ian

[mcanerin]

Yes, you can implement them on the same site, though most people prefer to migrate the old .html pages over to PHP with 301 redirects just to make things easier.

Ian

[egain]

Couldnt have said it better.

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Damn, I just realized something: I was gonna use the term 'new...on the block', too a couple of secs ago, which made me think of your saying '..php was the new language on the block!'. Do you ever really use this phrase or was it your subconscious mind that picked this unordinary phrase up from my screenname you must have read quite a lot answering so many of m questions? :D

I think I was almost gonna use it only due to my strange screenname (its not like ive ever used that screenname before..but i was listening to a old song by marky mark on youtube when i registered lol)..I've often realized how one picks up words/phrases subconsciously (being into foreign languages...) and find that quite interesting.

[chrisbigler]

i'm obviously a little late on this thread, but thought this would be helpful for others, as i was talking with a developer last week and this thread reminded me of it...

he asked / said "... if i have a site about xyz, why not just make xyz an executable extension? file names are important for seo, right? that way every page on the site would have xyz in it and should help rankings. ..."

just as someone else pointed out earlier in this thread, i said extensions mean "jack" because you can manufacture whatever you want and spam keywords that way so, forget concerns over file extensions.

anyhow, heh