Not long ago, a pal of mine sent me an electronic mail soliciting my opinion on whether a domain he changed into growing ought to be done using WordPress, LAMP, or ASP.NET. I’ve used all of these but have always been so centered on the info and mastering them that I never absolutely notion approximately the remarkable question of “What era should be used for a given website online?”. That is the sort of desirable query that I determined to position my thoughts on paper and provide some education to others.
Some people don’t have the abilities and capability actually to be able to pick the maximum appropriate era. They know one issue, and that is going to be made to work in all cases. That’s no longer always awful. However, it’s exceptional which will switch among technologies primarily based on the type of site. The crucial issue to recognize in net website development is that one era does now not match all.
WordPress
I actually have several websites presently walking WordPress. I in the beginning notion of WordPress as only a running a blog platform. While this is virtually its predominant use and what it’s miles optimized for, you may honestly use it to create a more “conventional” searching web website online. It is very configurable, and there are tons of custom plug-ins to be had which could assist you in adding RSS feeds, SEO tags, vote casting, etc. Since WordPress is developed with PHP and MySQL, it’s also possible to create your own plugins and personalize your website template. Oh, and that’s the different exceptionally amazing factor approximately WordPress — the templates! There are literally lots of unfastened WordPress templates available for download. If you can not discover one that fits your website’s subject matter, then you are not looking tough enough.
Another fine thing approximately WordPress is that you can effortlessly find internet hosting providers that aid WordPress. In most instances, you can click an installation hyperlink and have WordPress properly established on your website in a few seconds. Then you visit the WordPress admin console and configure your site. It is all very smooth. You can add a couple of templates and easily switch between them. It is also easy to make minor changes to the templates (like changing tag traces, colorings, etc.).
WordPress’s different gain is that it’s far a blogging platform and the search engines like google love blogs. You can configure your WordPress install to mechanically ping one or extra blogging services whenever you add a brand new publish or page. In that manner, they recognize your site has changed, and they ought to come index your site again if you need your website to be discovered; then they use WordPress because the underlying engine is a great choice.
LAMP
In case you do not know, LAMP stands for Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP, which is a very not unusual and powerful set of generation additives used for constructing web websites (and did I mention completely Open Source and loose!). If you want entire manage your internet website, then LAMP is a great choice. There are plenty of examples, unfastened scripts, and many others. Available on the net website that will help you get commenced.
There also are lots of free editors and equipment that will help you along. The disadvantage of the LAMP is that it’s far difficult with a view to creating your very own improvement “surroundings.” Since a maximum of us run a few Windows apps as our laptop operating gadget, we’d want to apply something like VMWare or Virtual PC to create a digital device strolling Linux. The subsequent task is getting all the additives nicely installed. While the installers for the LAMP additives have surely stepped forward, they still do not compare to the convenience of installing a Windows-based totally application.
The subsequent venture with the LAMP is debugging. It might be first-rate if we all wrote the best code. However, the reality is you need the ability to debug. There are PHP debuggers to be had. A true one goes to price you a few cash, although.
One of the nice things about the LAMP is that there are TONS of web hosting providers obtainable to select from. The motive is quite easy — LAMP is completely open-source, so there may be a minimal fee for the web hosting corporation to bear. That approach more margin for them!
ASP.NET
Microsoft’s contribution to website development is ASP.NET. You can use any .NET language (C#, VB.NET, Python.NET, etc.) to expand an ASP.NET primarily based web page. In my opinion, the quality aspect approximately ASP.NET is the reality you could use Microsoft Visual Studio for your improvement device. Visual Studio is the first-rate device out there. Yes, it expenses cash; however, you, in reality, get what you pay for. The different fine factor about ASP.NET is that you can, without problems, increase your Windows-based totally laptop or laptop.
It is more difficult to discover an appropriate ASP.NET website hosting company. Believe me, and I’ve looked! And I’ve used numerous different ones. The ASP.NET vendors lag in the back of the LAMP vendors in terms of what they provide. You also need to be careful and apprehend what the issuer means using things like “host limitless # of domain names.” In many cases, they just imply you may have an infinite # of domain name points for your single web website. That probably is not what you want.
I noted the use of Visual Studio before. That device is amazing and improves SOOOO a good deal less difficult. I did quite a bit of improvement using a LAMP and were given a few sites up and going for walks. I used Eclipse with a PHP plug-in, and it worked pretty accurately. I didn’t have Apache walking or Linux, so I could not genuinely debug; however, I managed. When it got here time to create a more advanced net web page, I quickly decided to switch over to ASP.NET and use Visual Studio. Debugging became a snap. The coding turned into making a great deal simpler to Intellisense and Visual Studio’s capability to “import” net offerings and make them easier for me to call from my code.
Making the Right Choice
Each of the era options has execs and cons. If you need to get a website up speedy and display basic statistics (textual content, images, video), then WordPress is an outstanding alternative. However, if you need a greater superior website, you do not need to spend a lot of cash on improvement gear, then LAMP is the nice preference. Finally, if you have already got Visual Studio or realize .NET programming, ASP.NET is a good choice. If you are genuinely fortunate and can recognize all three, then you could use the right tool for the activity no matter what.
