When I first started this experiment I planned on using a custom php framework. Recently I realized that its kinda pointless to attempt to do something like this and at the same time lock myself into something that may not be the best solution….
enter google, research, testing, and little sleep. Result: codeigniter was the best choice. Huh? Here’s why.
snakes not on the plane
I should say from jump: If I knew and had the time to learn python / django it would have been the winner, sadly I do not.
ruby, rails, hype
I’m a fan of ror, and of course when I decided to take what I’ve created so far and migrate it into something usable I of course thought of ruby on rails. Sadly I saw more than a few hurdles.
First off ror doesn’t play we’ll with others, meaning you shouldn’t run rails in a shared environment. The whole concept behind this experiment is a small start-up with a shoe string budget and 2-3 websites / apps. Yes its possible to host multiple rails apps on one server / vps, but it’s not recommended. There is of course passenger, but that leads into the next point. php +1
Ror is a resource hog, there I said it. When compared to php, rails is more resource intensive than php. Of course the answer is to optimize and scale out, but remember I’m trying to keep the monthly hosting budget under 100-120 bucks (yes seriously shoe string). So php was the choice here.
So far php seems like the best choice for what I’m trying to do, but I needed more than just a few issues I could work around. You can’t work around speed and optimizing. ruby is faster than php via command line, but ror is not amazingly faster when used via web. When you add an opcode cache into the picture ror gets is butt kicked hands down. Of course this is comparing a language to a framework, enter codeigniter.
Codeigniter still out performs ror with an opcode cache. That is just one optimization and php shows drastic improvement.
I wasn’t ready to abandon ror yet, simply put: why use an imitator if you can have the real deal. Codeigniter is a great framework, but it makes more since to actually use rails right?
In the end the answer is no. Rails has a higher level of maintainability out the box, but does less code, easier maintenance, and of course the ror cool factor out weight slower speed, higher cost to deploy, and fewer production optimizations? No.
MVC while not as strict in codeigniter, is there. That combined with OOP will make using a php framework easier to maintain, not ror easy, but easy enough for production imho.
framework, shamework
So we now know why php won over ruby, but why pick codeigniter? I originally started out writing a custom framework, which is always fun to do from time to time to push yourself, but in the end you see the downside and benefits of doing so. Since this entire idea revolves around a small start-up we also need to take development time into consideration.
A custom framework takes alot of trial and error, coding, and recoding, and still more coding. Using a php framework I can reduce the time it takes to get up and running, while still building what I want and need. Yes there’s some overhead compared to a custom framework, but in the end a start-up isn’t yahoo. You should be back at the planning table long before you reach yahoo numbers. Thats not to say you shouldn’t plan for massive growth (hence scalable), just that traffic / users / data on yahoo’s scale is far beyond my scope of experience and even I know its another elephant to eat.
When comparing php frameworks, i was originally looking at cakephp, but after some research found it to slow and with to much overhead. There are other frameworks, but only codeigniter and cakephp met my needs. 2-1=1 (or less than one mr. V), so codeigniter was the winner.
One thing I should note is how poor most of the php frameworks I looked at perform out the box. Yes rails (and merb) are better out the box. Luckily a few simple optimizations speeds things up.
all your base are belong to theory
So far everything has been pretty much all theory, research, and testing. No worries, the meat and potatoes are coming shortly.
the next few posts will cover setting everything up(centos5): memcached / memcachedb, ngninx, apache, varnish, mysql, s3 + rsync, varnish -> s3 relations, etc.
If you feel like following along head over to http://linode.com and setup a few machines, or setup a team in vmware.
Worth Reading
Here are few articles that I came across while researching, some are more on topic than others, but all have some value.
PHP vs Java vs Ruby:
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/industry-news/php-vs-java-vs-ruby-000887.php
Ruby vs PHP performance (cli)
http://izumi.plan99.net/blog/index.php/2008/01/17/ruby-vs-php-performance/
Ruby on Rails Fans
http://shiflett.org/blog/2006/feb/ruby-on-rails-fans
The performance test of 6 leading frameworks
http://www.alrond.com/en/2007/jan/25/performance-test-of-6-leading-frameworks/
