Hi Keith,
Your PHPprogrammer.Org site is a work of art. The aesthetics of the top picture is
perfect. Your text has the right sans-serif font and the right line height --- it's
not crammed together. I have terrible vision but I find your site emminantly
readable. On future construction, I'm going to *make sure* to use line height and
paragraph separation just like yours.
You mentioned somewhere that your menu isn't responsive. I like your menu because it
collapses the rightmost 5 menu items into a triple horizontal line, which everybody
now knows to click on for either a menu or options. I don't know how you did that --
- it's a pretty good trick. I saw your @media screen and (max-width: 400px) {.navbar
a {float: none; width:100%;}} in styles.css, but I don't understand how that hid
your 5 rightmost links, and I *certainly* don't understand how that made the triple
horzontal line icon show up. Like I said, quite a trick.
If I were to make a website like yours, I'd use plain HTML with CSS. What I'd use
PHP for is an actual application where the user has add/change/delete tasks.
Shopping cart, social media, web based replacement for normal computer programs,
etc.
I've stayed away from PHP all these years because I heard it had some horrible
security problems, including something about global variables. Have those been fixed
yet?
You mentioned MVC. Everybody has a different definition for MVC, and the "MVC" I've
seen on Ruby on Rails apps has been, in my opinion, awful. I've heard the purpose of
MVC is to separate appearance, data, and business logic. To my way of thinking, CSS
is perfect for defining appearance, Postgres or MySQL or MariaDB or even SQlite,
exclusively handles the data. I might suggest a fourth thing beyond appearance,
business logic and data: Utilities enabling the user to interact with data: Heading-
click sortable picklists, menus, and maybe even a screen generator.
22 years ago, before I heard the rumors of PHP security problems, I made a PHP
tutorial that culminated in a trivial add/change/delete application (I think CRUD)
is the current buzzword). It's at
http://troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200004/200004.htm#_part2 . If you ever want to
work on a FOSS YAML or even JSON defined screen generator, I'll help you. It should
be *much* easier on PHP+HTML than it was in the old days of 80x25 CLI screens.
I wish I'd seen PHPprogrammer.org in May 1996, a month before I started
Troubleshooters.Com. I'd have for sure made Troubleshooters.Com look more like
PHPprogrammer.org. However, Troubleshooters.Com now has hundreds of pages, and the
ones more than a decade old don't even use CSS.
Because Troubleshooters.Com has hundreds of web pages, I've always had trouble
making its home page. If you want a laugh, view the Troubleshooters.Com home page on
October 12, 2002:
https://web.archive.org/web/20021012120831/http://troubleshooters.com/troubleshooters.htm
If redirections delay you (I used redirections back then to shoehorn three domain
names into one $75/month hosting account), the redirections should clear in about 15
seconds.
SteveT
On Thu, 2022-07-28 at 19:48 -0700,
techlists@phpcoderusa.com wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
> This is a very interesting read. Very old school and that is ok because
> I am old and I like old school. I like most things old school. I will
> need some time to digest what you have shared.
>
> My first website in 2000 was developed using PERL and some DB that I
> think might have been an early version of MySQL.
>
> I've supported Drupal, WordPress, and Magento. Not an expert of any one
> of them, however I did get down in the mud.
>
> My second website was a PHP/MySQL home grown CMS. I've since moved my
> websites to WordPress. WordPress has a very large eco system and a
> substantial learning curve. I've read and practiced both of the
> WordPress handbooks - themes and plugins. Still do not feel comfortable
> creating themes or plugins for production.
>
> As a programmer I like the freedom of creating my website from scratch.
> Creating a static website local and then uploading it to the server has
> it's appeal. I need to ponder this for a few days or maybe longer.
>
> About a year and a half ago I created https://www.phpprogrammer.org/
> from scratch. It is a simple CMS created using PHP/MySQL. It was an
> experiment to see if an exact match domain would aid a website in
> ranking for that term. At a high level I say maybe not.... jury is
> still out and I need to do more analysis. I'm still learning and Google
> and the competition are a moving target.
>
> For me your approach appeals to me because I like more control. The
> drawback is when you get others involved and then you have to be the one
> who has to do the upgrades to the content and post those upgrades. Been
> there and I like to turn the project over to the business owner or
> others in the company and let them make any change or add content at
> will. WordPress is very good for this.
>
> I'm thinking of changing https://www.phpprogrammer.org/ to wordpress and
> taking the present code and make it MVC, add a text/content editor and
> add access control (users and permissions).
>
> Your approach is appealing.
>
> I know someone who has some C programs that run on Linux that he feeds
> data to and it gives him a static HTML website. He likes things that
> are minimal.
>
>
>
> On 2022-07-28 08:50, Steve Litt wrote:
> > On Thu, 2022-07-28 at 07:44 -0700, techlists@phpcoderusa.com wrote:
> >
> > > > One other thing: There's a reason Troubleshooters.Com isn't a
> > > > Drupal
> > > > site or a
> > > > Wordpress site or a Rails site or a Zope site. The minute a
> > > > database
> > > > becomes
> > > > involved, both deployment and backup become much, much more
> > > > difficult.
> > >
> > > How do you create content and how do you maintain it ie, modify your
> > >
> > > content?
> >
> > The answer I'm about to give is for web pages without frequent (weekly
> > through every second) changes. If you're making a shopping cart, blog,
> > or social media site of course you need a database. That being said...
> >
> > I make my web pages in VSCode, which is a zen-coding editor. Please do
> > a web search on zen-coding because zen-coding is the key to high
> > productivity when writing HTML. I do it right on my computer. My HTML5
> > is written to be well formed XML so I can easily test with a Python
> > XML parser and to make debugging easier. Nowadays, after it passes the
> > XML test, I put it
> >
> > The directory/file hierarchy on my computer hard disk is the same as
> > the one online: I simply use sftp to transfer files. To transfer an
> > entire site (perhaps your old web host went bad and you're moving to a
> > new one), you have many choices. Here are two:
> >
> > * Rsync the whole directory system
> > * Make a .tgz on your computer, sftp it up to your web host, ssh in to
> > your web host, and untar.
> >
> > This isn't my first rodeo, so I know my suggestion will be greeted
> > with howls of indignation:
> >
> > 1) HTML is soooooo 1996!
> > 2) My time's too valuable to code HTML!
> > 3) I'm not a programmer! (usually spoken with a hint of pride)
> > 4) I don't know HTML and CSS!
> > 5) You should use Bootstrap instead!
> >
> > Here's the truth about those assertions:
> >
> > 1) This is a logical falacy called "Appeal to novelty", described at
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_novelty . New things can be
> > good, and new things can be bad, so the choice must be made using
> > other criteria. Note also that "Appeal to novelty" is typically hyped
> > by those who want to reach into your pocketbook, whether it's a
> > kitchen remodeller or car salesman wanting you to replace your
> > perfectly functional kitchen or car, or whether it's a middleman like
> > Wordpress.Com wanting to insert themselves in the middle of your
> > STATIC content. Also, HTML is much better now than years ago, CSS is a
> > work of art, and we have zen-coding editors now to double our
> > productivity.
>
> I do not host or do anything with with WordPress.com.
>
> >
> > 2) Wait til you see how much time you need to spend when your web host
> > goes bad, and you know that happens every few years.
>
> I have S3 backups so I can move pretty fast.
>
>
> > But if time is
> > really the issue, go ahead and write your static content in Markdown
> > or Asciidoc and convert it. You still have the source document, no
> > database necessary.
> >
> > 3) HTML and CSS aren't programming. They're just a grammar, and a
> > pretty easy to learn grammar.
> >
> > 4) With zen-coding editors, HTML is much easier to start using, and
> > much quicker to learn. It's really not much of a challenge. CSS is
> > dead bang simple.
>
> I don't think CSS is as simple as you say. It is rule based, however
> there is a lot to know.
>
> >
> > 5) I can't argue to hard about this: Bootstrap is a good product that
> > can produce good web pages in the hands of a skilled practitioner. The
> > reasons I personally don't use Bootstrap is it adds over 100K of
> > download to each page, it's harder to learn and deal with than HTML
> > and CSS, and if you look at Bootstrap pages in the wild, most don't
> > pass HTML validation, which means they'll render differently on
> > different browsers.
> >
> > Bottom line: Direct HTML editing is MUCH easier and faster than
> > everyone thinks, and it yields web pages that look how you want on
> > every competent browser.
>
> This still leaves out the non-technical person. That is the beauty if
> Drupal and WordPress. WordPress has 30% market share.
>
>
> I think HTML is not all that easy when you are down in the mud creating
> web content. There are some things to know and learn.
>
> >
> > Once again, if you actually need data from users, by all means use a
> > database. But for information-only pages, HTML/CSS is the better
> > choice. If a page needs automation not requiring permanent storage of
> > data, why not do the automation in Javascript?
> >
>
> Good point about JS.
>
> > I'm in the process of writing about all of this in detail. See
> > http://troubleshooters.com/web/ [1] .
> >
>
> Ok so your website has been around for maybe 26 years and has more than
> 300 pages so I would think your website has at least some authority and
> I would imaging you get a fair amount of traffic.
>
> Interesting approach. I will need to ponder it for a few days or
> longer. I think for someone who is technical and there is no need for
> others to get involved, your approach is great and I see the benefit of
> doing it your way.
>
> > SteveT
> >
> >
> >
> > Links:
> > ------
> > [1] http://troubleshooters.com/web/i
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