Web Site Technology – Consider Your Options

Not long ago, a friend of mine sent me an e-mail requesting my opinion on whether a site he is growing should be achieved using WordPress, LAMP, or ASP.NET. I’ve used all of those; however, I have constantly been so focused on the info and mastering them that I never clearly thought the exceptional query of “What generation ought to be used for a given web page?”. That is such an accurate question that I determined to put my mind on paper and provide a few schooling to others.

Some human beings do not have the abilities and potential to be able to select the most suitable generation. They realize one issue, which must be made to paintings in all cases. That’s not always horrific, but switching between technologies based totally on the website online is high-quality. The essential element to understand in net web page improvement is that one era does not stay healthy.

WordPress

I even have several websites presently using WordPress. I first thought of WordPress as only running a blog platform. While that is sincerely its principal use and what it’s far optimized for, you may use it to create an extra “conventional” looking web website. It could be very configurable, and heaps of custom plugins available could help you add RSS feeds, search engine optimization tags, vote casting, and many others. Since WordPress is developed with PHP and MySQL, creating your plugins and customizing your website template is possible. Oh, and that is the other extraordinarily top-notch aspect of WordPress — the templates! There are thousands of unfastened WordPress templates to be had for download. You aren’t looking difficult enough if you can’t discover one that suits your website’s subject matter.

Another first-class component of WordPress is that you can effortlessly find internet website hosting carriers that help WordPress. In most cases, you could click an install link and have WordPress properly installed on your website in seconds. Then you go to the WordPress admin console and configure your site. It is all very smooth. You can upload more than one template and, without problems, transfer among them. Making minor template changes (like converting tag strains, colorations, etc.) is easy.

WordPress’s other advantage is that it’s a blogging platform, and search engines love blogs. You can configure your WordPress installation to robotically ping one or more running blog offerings whenever you add a new put-up or page. That way, they realize your website online has been modified, and they must index your web page again. If you want your site to be located, use WordPress because the underlying engine is a good alternative.

LAMP

In case you do not know, LAMP stands for Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP, a widespread and powerful set of technology additives used for building internet websites (and did I mention completely Open Source and loose!). LAMP is a good choice if you need full control over your internet site. There are plenty of examples, flexible scripts, and so forth. It is to be had at the net site to help you get started. There also are masses of unfastened editors and gear to help you alongside. The disadvantage of the LAMP is that it’s more difficult to create your personal improvement “surroundings.” Since most folks run a few Windows apps as our desktop operating system, we would need to use something like VMWare or Virtual PC to create a digital machine jogging Linux. The next undertaking is getting all of the components properly set up. While the installers for the LAMP additives have advanced, they still do not examine the ease of installing a Windows-based total utility. The next assignment with the LAMP is debugging. It might be fine if all of us wrote the best code. However, the reality is you want the potential to debug. There are PHP debuggers available. An excellent one goes to cost you a little money, though.

One of the exceptional matters of approximately LAMP is that there are TONS of web hosting vendors accessible with a purpose to pick from. The cause is quite easy — LAMP is a completely open supply, so there’s very little value for the hosting corporation to endure. That means a greater margin for them!

ASP.NET

Microsoft’s contribution to the net website online improvement is ASP.NET. You can use any .NET language (C#, VB.NET, Python.NET, etc.) to expand an ASP.NET primarily based web page. The first-rate aspect of ASP.NET is that you can use Microsoft Visual Studio as your improvement tool. Visual Studio is the quality device out there. Yes, it fees cash. However, you sincerely get what you pay for. A pleasant factor about ASP.NET is that you can easily expand your Windows-based computing device or PC.

It is more difficult to find a proper ASP.NET hosting company. I’ve looked! And I’ve used numerous exclusive ones. The ASP.NET vendors lag behind the LAMP carriers in terms of what they offer. You additionally need to be cautious and understand the issuer’s manner by using things like “host unlimited # of domains.” In many cases, they mean you could have an unlimited # of domains pointing to your single internet website. That likely isn’t always what you need.

I cited using Visual Studio before. That tool is extraordinary and makes improvement SOOOO much simpler. I made much progress using the LAMP and got some websites up and strolling. I used Eclipse with a PHP plugin, and it labored quite well. I didn’t have Apache walking or Linux, so I couldn’t definitely debug; however, I still controlled. When it got time to create a more advanced internet web page, however, I quickly replaced it with ASP.NET and used Visual Studio. Debugging became a snap, and the coding made it out to make difficult for Intellisense and Visual Studio’s potential to “import” web services and make them less complicated for me to call from my code.

Making the Right Choice

Each of the technology alternatives has execs and cons. If you need to speed up a site and display primary information (textual content, pictures, video), then WordPress is a great option. However, if you want a more advanced web website and do not want to spend much money on improvement tools, then LAMP is the quality preference. Finally, if you already have Visual Studio or know .NET programming, ASP.NET is a great option. If you are surely fortunate and know all 3, you may use the proper device for the task irrespective of what.

Brad Salmon has over 18 years of experience designing and developing generation solutions. He is passionate about the era and spends his spare time studying new technologies and practicing them to feature actual prices. His Blog [http://www.SalmonSites.Com] carries treasured data and instructions learned from his net web page improvement efforts.