Archive for php

Why I Switched to WordPress from Custom CodeIgniter

I spent some time initially setting up my personal blog using a custom CodeIgniter structure. It went well, but then, as things can do, I began to falter in terms of time to put into the project.

It got me thinking about the more general idea of building something in software versus using a pre-built solution. When do you go with one instead of the other? How is that decision made?

After thinking about it, it really comes down to two things:

1. Does the pre-existing solution fit what you need?
2. If not, can it be extended?

What I realized is that spending time on making my own custom software with all of the bells and whistles wasn’t proving my merit, it was getting in the way of me building other, more exiting things that hadn’t been done a million times over before.

It made me realize that, while every decision is different, in many cases it can be far better to take a pre-existing solution and extending it versus building your own from scratch. Sure, it’s not your code, but your overall productivity (the ultimate measure in many ways), can be greatly enhanced from it.

No comments, be first...

PHP and CodeIgniter

First off, I am a huge fan of CodeIgniter. I tried out Ruby on Rails and I immediately saw (and loved) the benefits of an MVC framework. My problem was two main things: I get uncomfortable when stuff is done “automagically” for me in case I want to change something underlying (yes, RoR is open source, so I could change things, but that can also be a lot of work), and when I tried to deploy something I was working on, it felt like there were a few stumbling blocks.

Granted, that second one is probably due to my inexperience with the framework, but still, that learning curve cannot be ignored. Instead, I went looking for something with similar practices and I found CodeIgniter (I also did some work with CakePHP, but the automagic this still bothered me a little).

Sure, I work in ASP.NET normally, but I still feel in total control there (at least most of the time).

Anyway, that was why I decided to make my site in CodeIgniter – the easy-of-use and simple tools, while still feeling in total control of what was going on underneath.

1 comment