Question

We’re looking to develop a CMS module for our website and I need some help in choosing the language/framework for this project. Basically we need to develop a “help’ module like this one from ebay http://pages.ebay.com/help/index.html which will contain a lot of static pages with nice URLs for SEO.
The application must run fast using low computer resources.
We have been looking to use php on a custom made mvc framework but we received advice from other sources that py/django is the exactly language/framework that we need in terms of maintainability and development speed because it was developed for exactly this kind of projects so I need an expert advice on this matter with pro and cons for each choice.

Answer 1

It comes down to what your programmer is comfortable with. If you don’t have a programmer, find one and ask him/her what she’s comfortable working with. The task you’re describing seems pretty simple. It can all be done with straight php, python, ruby. Having used PHP, Java and Python, I have a preference for the latter. But as I said, the task is so simple that you can do it without problem in most languages. I suspect that you’ll find much more developers familiar with PHP, so you might want to look in that direction.

As far as frameworks go, there again, I don’t see much that would require the raw power of an entire framework.

• static pages: you need a cms, either custom built or something really lean and dead simple.
• clean urls can be achieved with url rewriting (e.g. apache modrewrite directives).

Again, hire the right developer and trust his/her input. Don’t go and tell him/her how to work if you don’t know how it’s done.