Welcome

Hello, and welcome to alexwestconsulting.com.  My name is Alex West and I am a Java, C# and PHP developer from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

This site was originally intended simply to put my resume online and help in my endeavours to secure contract work, but has quickly grown into a place where I share devlopment tips.  While I am predominantly a Java and C# developer, this website was created in PHP with Joomla.  Why PHP and Joomla instead of Java or C#?  Well, java hosting is at least 10x the cost of PHP and C#, and PHP simply has the edge over C# (.Net) in creating community driven/template driven websites because of the number of free, open-source resources available.  Many people seem to think that PHP is the "best", or "easiest" language around, and that is simply not true: it's simply the cheapest and easiest to make community-based websites. 

So, why did I develop this site with Joomla rather than create it all myself from scratch in language of choice?  Well, the first thing you learn as a developer is to leverage other peoples' solutions whenever possible.  If you created everything from scratch yourself you would be far less productive than those who understand this fundamental premise.  Even the afformentioned languages all continually grow with new helper library classes being added with each version, and IDE's that ease development which also see routine enhanencements to speed productivity.

Why Joomla over some of the other PHP solutions out there, such as WordPress, Drupal, PHPBB, SMF, PHPBB, etc.?  Well, I researched and tried them all.  I tried them all out of curiousity's sake, but I decided on Joomla very early in the game.   Why? 

• Forum platforms such as PHPBB, vBulletin and SMF are all really solid products and work well if your primary goal is to provide a place for users to communicate with each other.  But, forum websites are difficult to customize to the point where they look like a professional website and, while they have mods, there are few options for adding content enhancements.  At the end of the day, what you end up with with one these solutions is a forum, not a website.

• WordPress is a very streamlined product that is easy to get up and running a blog style website in one day.  It has many plugins and has Trackback support, but again, there are few formatting options;  Wordpress to me seems to be too...flat.  At the end of the day, what you end up with with WordPress is a blog, not a website.

• Drupal (and Mambo) is Joomla's closest competitor and many say that Drupal is a more solid product in terms of its refined user management, flexible taxonomy (heirarchy of sections/categories/articles), TrackBack support and generally "better" coding.  But, Joomla just seemed "cooler";  Drupal websites looked so bland compared to Joomla websites.  I suspect more than anything that while Drupal MAY have more potential than Joomla, the Drupal website lacks any sense of community in the plugins (Modules) download area: no ratings, user comments, download statistics, etc.  The large allure of these products is how extensible they are, and sifting through hundreds of faceless plugins is simply no fun.  So, Drupal users are afraid to install new plugins, and fail to communicate to the developers what changes they would like to see, and fail to spread the word about what plugin is hot, and what plugin is not.

With Joomla it is easy to quicky find the plugin that people have found useful and get developing fast.   While there is no viable solution to the taxonomy problem in Joomla 1.5 (there is an extension, DeepPockets II that resolves this for Joomla 1.0.x), and no non-commercial TrackBack support (only azul.com's $30 JomComment and $45 MyBlog will addthis), EVERYTHING ELSE is easy to add, including stunning customizeable templates to give your website a professional look.  What finally sold me on Joomla is this comparative marketshare graph:

What this says to me is that more development is going into Joomla so there will be more/better plugins and more opportunites as a developer.  Drupal is lagging behind and WordPress is simply not a viable option for any serious website other than a blog (don't hate me for saying this, WordPress users). 

Will things always be like this?  Not a chance.  It is already apparent that plugins are being developed with versions to support each of these 3 main contenders.  If the plugin is open-source and non-commercial, which most are, the party that developed the version for one platform is by no means the one who developed the platform for the other.  This is a GOOD thing that more and more makes the choice betwen these three that much less significant.  But for now, Im sticking with Joomla.

 - alex west