Website decisions

The discussion today was around the technicalities behind designing a website. The number of options we have, and what are the technologies involved and what kind of end user experience we provide ... it is an infinite combination.

The site I am working involves dynamic pages with data pulled from a db. Planning to provide a newsgroup facility to the users. First decision I was faced is the basic web programming environment to adapt to. Had a choice between java world and php. After working with php for two weeks, I decided to move to java. In php, I started implementing common utility modules, navigation control, generic database access etc. Slowly I realized that I am writing a framework of my own ideas. The more I was thinking .. the more I realized I was trying to simulate mvc in php and starting from scratch. That was not convincing thing to do. So, I moved to java which can give me rich frameworks and other standard tools, concepts.

Then I downloaded eclipse and playing with it. For Jsf and hibernate, I felt the myeclipse plugin might be useful. I might have to pay $30 for using this. The other alternate is using jdev and adf. After pondering on adf, I realized that I will be limited to use hibernate in jdev as jdev is friendly towards toplink. So, I switched back to eclipse wagon.

The current issue I am trying to work out is to find integration means to bring the mvnforum and new jsf apps together. I want the mvn to register user and login them; my jsf apps will use the logged in or registered users info.

Apart from these issues, the webhosting companies are a different set of discussion with wide scope of topics like technology, database, size, speed, support etc.

Will update you folks on the progress.