Viewing Thread:
"Little Ditty for you"

Go back over the wonders of PHP and it's useage...

I've just compiled a page of links for a political site I have been working on, in all there are over 800 of them on this page...

Out of this 800+ there are:
200 using ASP and 1 using PHP! That's right... 1...

Now all of these are large global sites of major status, so if PHP is that amazing, how come only one of them uses it?

For Linux you don't have to pay them at all!

Open Source is a funny thing. People can argue that if you can see the source then it's less secure. However, holes get spotted much quicker and then closed. Also, if it's open source, new can let out much quicker, all someone has to do is write a fix, and then you either patch the source or get a whole new patch.

Think of it this way: How many Apache-attacking viri are there compared to IIS-attacking viri? Also, why is there only one (reletively minor) Linux-attacking virus and millions of Windows-attacking ones?

PHP is a little different though. Because you write it yourself, it's only as secure as the script you write. The same goes for ASP. However, PHP has less HOLES than ASP does.

Turbonutter wrote:
> PHP is much more secure than ASP, partly because new releases and bug fixes get turned around and released much quicker.

Just a query really, as the train of thougt here is that Open Source software tends to be seen as more more insecure because of it's nature. But theat's developers for you!!


>Also, I wouldn't know how much it would be to convert but you'd be able to forget all about lisencing costs...

We only have to pay for them once!! instead of per-server!!

PHP is much more secure than ASP, partly because new releases and bug fixes get turned around and released much quicker.

Also, I wouldn't know how much it would be to convert but you'd be able to forget all about lisencing costs,

Bob wrote:
> the apache module chart which shows php is installed in 50% of apache servers. That means that 32% of web servers have apache with php which is higher then the total number of IIS servers out there.

With only a growth rate of 1.1%... Thats quite a slow rate of adoption.

Bob wrote:
> A big reason for using ASP is stupid management. Microsoft reps come in with
> fancy graphics and presentations and woo the management. PHP doesn't do this as
> its free and doesn't need to sell itself. If you want to see how wide spread its
> use is then check out the web server survey figures published every month.
>to see the web server charts which show apache has nearly 64% of
> the market and MS only has 26%.

>to see the apache module chart which shows php is installed in
> 50% of apache servers. That means that 32% of web servers have apache with php
> which is higher then the total number of IIS servers out there.

Spooky!! I've just been looking at these stats for another topic... How bizzarre!!

A big reason for using ASP is stupid management. Microsoft reps come in with fancy graphics and presentations and woo the management. PHP doesn't do this as its free and doesn't need to sell itself. If you want to see how wide spread its use is then check out the web server survey figures published every month. Click here to see the web server charts which show apache has nearly 64% of the market and MS only has 26%.

Click here to see the apache module chart which shows php is installed in 50% of apache servers. That means that 32% of web servers have apache with php which is higher then the total number of IIS servers out there.

Just to give you a few of those site names involved:

Ananova, BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Euronews, ITN, Sky, Home Office, London Assembley, UN, NATO...

The argument that no one will use it because it's free is a bit crap... HTML is free? ONe of the reasons is existing infrastructure... As pointed out already, if your laready MS based with your LAN etc, it's cheaper and easier to continue with that platform, if your staring out new, then you'd look at all of the options...

We have looked into Linux/PHP here, but quite frankly the support that NS offers is too good to turn down as well as the support we get from DELL on our servers.

Just to put you in the picture with what it would cost us to change our entire infrastructure to cope... Currently we have:

24 Web Servers (2 Secure / https)
2 Domain Controllers (BIG IP's)
3 Database Servers (1 Redundant)

All run IIS, SQL, MS2000 and ASP.

We host over 200 sites all dynamic ones feeding off ASP (about 75%) and most of those dynamic ones involve some form of security password system on them.

The cost of this little lot alone and the installation comes near to the 1,000,000 mark and gives us 24/7/365 up time.
Could you imagine the cost for converting our systems to use PHP instead let alone Linux/Unix?

Just out of interest, how secure is PHP?

It's a feel-good thing. People that if they pay s-loads for a Microsoft site they are getting a good thing. They also think that if it's free it makes their company look cheap, which is a bad thing. Of course, we all know the opposite.

Another factor is if you get TAUGHT web development you get taught ASP. Because of this, there are hundreds of Microsoft developers to every one Unix developer.

If you need evidence as to its superiority, just go to the most popular and useful site on the Internet - Google. For their dynamic pages they use PHP.

PHP is like Unix - it's superior to Windows* (for the Internet) but because of its philosophy, and that people just won't accept that anything free is good, it's not reached dominance yet.

It'll be a managment thing. Microsoft is big and apparently best, or so the marketing people would like you to believe. I suppose its a bit like your situation too Tyla, even if they did want to try php, it'd mean weeks of work which is expensive and time consuming, so it just doesn't make good business sense.

See http://htmlgoodies.earthweb.com/usersubmit/installphp.html for PHP stuff.