Comments on: About PHP usage

By: Damien Seguy

Damien Seguy — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some more maps of PHP Usage, posted once a month.
They are in French, but maps are… graphical, aren’t they?

By country (based on domain and geolocalization)
http://www.nexen.net/phpversion/tld.php

By version
http://www.nexen.net/phpversion/versions.php

My session from PIC frankfurt (in English, November 2003).
http://www.phpconference.de/2003/slides/business_track/seguy_usagephp_en.pdf

By Server (outdated)
http://www.nexen.net/phpversion/serveurs.php

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Where I work, we integrated PHP with Crystal Reports and MS SQL Server for the Asset Management field… it was very much a kludge, as Crystal Reports only exposed a .asp API, so we ended up somewhat mixing the two. That was for an intranet situation.

By: Jazeps

Jazeps — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

PHP + GD is the best solution for porn galleries and this is where I see PHP most.

By: Aquarius

Aquarius — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of months ago, people at my daytime job were talking about replacing an old database program with Access. We use the database to keep track of projects we do for clients and the PowerPoint presentations that are produced for them. I said I could try to do it in MySQL and build a PHP-driven front end so all employees would be able to access the application through the local intranet.

I�ve been learning a lot about both PHP and project management from working on this application that just keeps growing. People are very enthusiastic about how fast it all is. However, the entire office is running Windows and MS Office, and questions get raised if we can�t “automatically extract titles from PowerPoint presentations” and if we can automatically grant people working on certain project access to that project�s folder when they are assigned to the project through the db application. Every now and then I wonder if Access would have provided easier integration into our MS-oriented office environment. However, I was very happy to find out that it is possible to generate Excel spreadsheets with PHP. If such an extension ever gets written for PowerPoint, it would make some people at my work very happy, though I suspect most of the people using PHP couldn�t care less.

By: Oliver Dueck

Oliver Dueck — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

My organization has build several fairly complex PHP applications which receive relatiely low traffic. We may be building a site that will be extremely busy, and I would be most comfortable doing it in PHP. However, as you pointed out, there are not many resources available to help those of us building high-traffic applications. This is odd because there obviously are many high traffic PHP sites out there. I think this would be a great topic for SitePoint to tackle, as the site builders obviously have the relevant experience.

By: Octal

Octal — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Interesting discussion. I have switched the corporate Intranet at work to use php rather than asp. However as Harry pointed out the problems inherent in integrating with Windows technology especially in terms of publishing Word documents to the Intranet (and the nightmare of managing those documents) is complex to say the least.

With regards to the topic of this blog post is there any evidence that PHP for corporate Intranets/extranets is being replaced in favour of .Net? (For reasons stated above; "integration with Windows")

By: Manuzhai

Manuzhai — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I think 80+% of top 1000 companies is *VERY* ambitious. I think you’re overestimating because you live in a PHP world. I’m not blaming you, I just think your frame of reference results in a bias.

By: rick_g22

rick_g22 — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been developing a multi-tier intranet site with PHP under Apache2/Win (it also works under linux). It generates formatted excel spreadsheets, and along with an automated C++ program for file management. The program uploads Visual Foxpro files (DBF) and the PHP converts them to mysql. That’s a rather nifty integration, IMHO.

By: Markus Wolff

Markus Wolff — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I got even two comments :-)
1.
I don't think 80% of TOP1000 companies is too ambitious.
Sometimes PHP is just used by small workgroups or in extranets without anyone noticing, for example forum applications for group-based discussions. I've seen this quite often. Just because they use it it doesn't mean it's always business-critical. That would indeed be a bit ambitious :-)

2. I don't know why everyone seeems to have such difficulties integrating with Microsoft Office. Just look at how the native Windows applications are handling this: They're using COM. So can PHP, if you use it on a Windows server. You have exactly the same possibilities using PHP on a Windows machine as you'd have using ASP or even ASP.NET (been there, done that).

Also, you can have a look at PEAR - not only do they have the Excel file generation package, there's also a package that deals with OLE in general. And there's far more that can be done for example with the WebDAV and SOAP packages... use your imagination, folks ;-)

By: Taoism

Taoism — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I know this is specific to phpBB (but hey, it is written in PHP); have a look at the link below for a thread about configuring phpBB (and hardware, etc) for a high volume site. The thread start (Lanzer) is a who you really want to read for most of the thread. His insights into optimizations for the volume of his website is interesting. The sheer volume that his site gets absolutely stuns me. I have never seen any site that even comes close to it (for a message forum).

Check out this quote from one of the posts in the ongoing thread:
"...we receive about 700,000 posts a day..."

Real stats from the board on his site [GaiaOnline]:
"Who is Online - In total there are 10181 users online :: 8161 Registered, 539 Hidden and 1481 Guests"
"We have 606247 registered users"
"Our forums have a total of 69395290 articles"

I also remember reading that some of the threads are over 70,000 posts long...

So read this thread for a very interesting perspective on tuning for a large site:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=135383

Cheers,
Keith.