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I have BS in Computer Science, and thus have experience developing software that runs at the command line or with a basic GUI. However, I have no experience making real, functional, websites. It has become apparent to me that I need to expand my skills to encompass web development. I have been using Ruby to develop applications, but I am aware that it is quite popular for web development. I want to use my skills as a programmer to assist me in developing a personal website for a band.
I have experience with HTML, but very little with CSS. I want to leverage my skills with programming languages to create a website containing pictures, audio clips, a dynamic calendar, a scheduling request tool, and other features common to band websites.
What kind of resources are available for a competent desktop programmer to learn the entire process for developing a website? Is it best to use free CSS templates and WordPress as a foundation for my site or make it from scratch? Should I use GUI tools or write it all in Vim/Emacs? Is Ruby on Rails sufficient for my personal website, or should I consider a more mature development platform?
My main goal for this project is to come up to speed on current web design technology, and actually understand the entire process for building a website.
I think one really important thing to understand in web development is HTTP. HTML and CSS are important, but I think it's more critical to understand the stateless nature of the web, and how each of the HTTP verbs work, and what they can/can't do.
http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/http.html
A good tool for seeing how HTTP works is Fiddler.
If it's as much a learning exercise as anything then take an iterative approach. Build revise. Build revise. My (very) rough guideline below:
Client
Start with the structure of a website and concentrate on the client.
Use notepad and build a bunch of static pages for your band. i.e. Hand code initially. Try to build all your pages with CSS. No table markup. Then play around with some Javascript to bring things to life. (Navigational menu\ Calendar selections\etc). Learn about how to import and link to Javascript and CSS files.... and how these files are treated re:caching etc.
Try to learn up to the limits of what you can do on the client (generally). Factor in the nuances of 3-4 browsers (Firefox/IE6/IE8/Chrome) re:DOM and client side eventing.
Server
Then start looking for what you might want to change across pages/sessions. i.e. what needs to be manipulated server side. And pick a server side technology.
Start with basic post-back processing. Forget databases at this point. Learn how your framework of choice maintains state..... not just the name of the technology but the real nuts and bolts of it. One of your single greatest assets as a web developer is understanding the state model(s) of the technology you're using.
Then go for a deep dive on the web server technology of choice (and in general). Understand the full request pipeline from client to server and back. This will teach you forms, http and its verbs, web server, filters and modules, server to framework hand off, page and control life cycles, back to the client.
Now start working on dynamic content injection and the like. How to make and use reusable components in your web pages.
Databases, caching, performance and diagnostics.
Then get into into all the fun stuff like ajax, etc. Replace your javascript with jQuery, etc.
Then you got the whole Webservices\XML\JSON\etc side of things to discover.
Resources
Well the web obviously. For client side stuff, going to the sites of companies who make third party web controls can be quite interesting. Asking how the hell they did that? Viewsource is your friend. Look at how they structure and build their pages. Pick a couple of good web designer sites, and you find a plethora of rants about browser wars etc that will give you good (under the hood) info.
Once you hit server side, I'd go for white paper type learning from your vendor of choice for your technologies.i.e. webservers/frameworks/etc. Again find a 3rd party howto/evangelist site (I used to use a lot of "4 guys from Rolla" for example) that will demonstrate how to do various things. Language learning is ongoing. Basically just do the best you can till you find a better way.... and always be on the lookout for a better way.
You really need to understand html, forms and css to get anywhere. I say forms as this will give you the round trip needed to understanding the stateless nature of web dev.
To further labour the point, I have interviewed many people who think you can only have one form on a page and can only have one submit button per form. This is all down to a lack of foundation knowledge.
So for that I'd recommend starting with htmldog.com.
After that, a lot of web development is done with frameworks. Gone are the days where you do it yourself (well mostly) but my above point still stands. You do need to be able to peep under the hood with some confidence.
I've been doing web development for 12 years and started out with Perl on Solaris and Linux. Since then I've also done Java and more recently ASP.NET. However, I'm slowly falling for Django in my private projects.
What I've found over the years is that the inherent problems - cookies, javascript, presentation, state, authentication are all the same but just handled differently. So ultimately its down to you and your language preference. Plus a little of enlightened self interest when it comes to potential employment.
Programming aside, you should also become familiar with web servers (Apache and IIS spring to mind), Http codes and headers, Mime types and encoding and FTP. As well as Javascript (mentioned already), plugins, browser platforms and good development practises such as using Firebug, Fiddler and so on. It also wouldn't hurt to have a good idea of the image formats available, image optimisation, CSS sprites, content compression, caching and the like.
All depends on where you want to start!
For a newbie, I'd pick Django and (obviously) Python. Good, clean language with cheap startup options, low cost IDEs (ie free) and hosting your sites is very affordable.
But that's just a subjective opinion.
If your goal is to
My main goal for this project is to
come up to speed on current web design
technology, and actually understand
the entire process for building a
website.
Then start from scratch in Ruby, PHP, Java, ASP.NET, etc...
When you run into a design problem or just want to know how others have approached something, then look at the frameworks.
Once your up to speed, and your website is starting to grow, then segway into a framework, to get up to speed on the frameworks.
I agree with John on this one.
As you know from your own experience in pursuing your BSc, understanding the basics of any language is what makes you even more capable in expanding that knowledge or specializing.
With that in mind, it would be best to understand the basics of HTML and CSS.
Understanding the syntax and overall language will help in the future when you want to pursue large projects using frameworks like Django and Rails. The basics will also especially help with tweaking CMS' like Wordpress to be more customizable to your needs.
One thing in particular that I'd like to mention is that web programming, like many other forms of programming has its own special structure and "proper" way of doing things.http://www.w3.org is a great way to ensure that your work is passing general web design standards, most sites don't follow this because it is tedious, but from a learning perspective it ensures that you get a nice strong foundation.
www.w3schools.com is also a great resource for detailed help on web programming. Lastly, I like colourful code, so I like using basic text editors such as notepad++ or notepad2 or gedit to do my web coding. GUIs like dreamweaver may tend to fill up your code with extra junk and spaces, so I don't recommend them, but they are still great tools.
Don't bother with Rails yet -- write CGI scripts in Ruby. It will be very similar to what you have done for class.
After you have about thirty of those under your belt, you'll know what you want out of a web framework.
I'm a Computer Scientist and a web programmer and I would suggest you learn both HTTP and CGI:
CGI Made Really Easy
HTTP Made Really Easy
As the titles of the above tutorials claim, they made the concepts "really easy" for me.
Once you've got CGI and HTTP down pat, I'd suggest checking out following sites that provide a wealth of articles and references for web programming:
webmonkey
w3schools
Mozilla Developer Center
Assuming you want to concentrate on writing web apps, then Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby are all fine choices (I myself use Perl predominantly) and I'd suggest doing some research into the popular web frameworks available for each language.
Most importantly, pick something simple as your first web app, e.g. a form and a page that shows the results of submitting that form. Some good examples (using Perl's CGI module) can be found here:
CGI.pm - a Perl5 CGI Library -- see the first set of links on this page.
When you want to start writing web apps that use a database, read up on SQL and popular libraries/modules in your chosen language for database manipulation, especially ORM (Object-Relational-Mapping) interfaces that allow you to deal with records in an Object-Oriented fashion.
Good luck with it! Being a web programmer is fun because your audience is teh intarwebz! :)
If you are starting from scratch as per John MacIntyre's suggestion, you may lean towards PHP. With all of its shortcomings, it does have one really good user manual. It is also easy to get started with and is installed on pretty much every host and goes well with Apache.
Also, w3 schools is good to begin learning about CSS and XHTML but don't forget to check out the specs at W3C.
Also, please read this Stack Overflow question & answers.
For what you're describing, Rails or Django might be slight overkill but it wouldn't hurt to learn them. Django, in particular, might be good because of the notion of a project containing multiple apps (e.g. calendar).
Whether you use a framework or write everything yourself, though, you'll need to know HTML and CSS. CSS is extremely simple if you have a BS in CS...you could read a tutorial and know it in five minutes.
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I started with TYPO3 and I read so many superlatives about it.
But for me it looks quite chaotic and much more difficult then the other systems.
I found some books about it but I do not know if it is worth to buy them because they are quite old.
I tried to find some tutorials but I was not much successful.
So my questions are:
Is it so better than the other systems that I should try to manage it?
If so, are there any good examples for beginners in TYPO3?
There are many pros and cons but the first question that you should answer yourself to find out what to use is... Are you looking for an universal content management framework on which you intend to build several websites?
If YES, then keep considering TYPO3. It has some great benefits, e.g.:
Strict separation of core and site-specific files which greatly easies the management of several websites on one server because you can have one core only which you symlink from several websites. Applying a security update to all the websites is then a matter of minutes.
Tree-like structure with pages resembling folders of a filesystem and various content records resembling files within them and the backend that supports working with those elements in a way resembling the work with folders/files - copying and moving content records, pages with content records and even whole trees of pages and records. There's also functionality that resembles symlinking (both for pages and content records) which simplifies management of content on large websites.
UNIX-like permission system for pages with the option to have finer permission system using the be_acl extension.
A configuration (using its own configuration language called Typoscript) that is stored in a single field of one or more template records, that can be edited using a text editor of your choice (I use Notepad++ with Typoscript syntax highlighting + "It's All Text!" extension for Firefox), that cascades down a page tree, that can be overridden on any page and that can be also stored in a text file on the filesystem which means that you can have configuration files shared by all the websites on a server thus allowing you to quickly change/fix/modify behavior of all of them at once.
Ability to handle multilingual websites with both one-tree structure (all the language versions have the same structure) or multi-tree structure (every language version has different structure).
Ability to host several websites/domains from within one installation of TYPO3.
A development program where there are no changes of functionality within a branch (e.g. 4.5.x) of the system and yet with some of the branches having "long term support" (3 years) and thus receiving security updates - this allows you to have up-to-date websites for a significant period of time without having to do an update that would possibly change/break their functionality.
If NO and you want to use some system for one project only, then... Is there a single specific functionality that the website is supposed to achieve?
If yes, look for a system which is best adapted for that task. If you want to build a blog or a photogallery, use a system which was designed with this specific task in mind. TYPO3 would not be your best option. Not that you cannot build a blog or a photogallery with it but it would take you more work.
If no and you are just building a casual website, then think whether there is some other good reason to invest the time into learning TYPO3 to make it worth it. TYPO3 (from the point of view of a webdeveloper) is rather hard to learn and for one project might not be worth the effort.
About the comparison to other CMSes:
Drupal
I hear it's even more confusing than TYPO3 and has made many a developer sigh
No backwards compatibility
Joomla
It has made big progress in the last years, code is lightweight and modern
Hackers DO love it (as it's so widespread)
Multilanguage support is not great
Editor Backend is definitely more confusing than TYPO3 (no pagetree out of the box)
You have to pay for many extensions
Configuration is tedious, as it happens mostly via mouse clicks (enormous button lists)
Wordpress
It's an own world – WPers say it's for all kinds of uses, not just blogs – but it's still a blog
Extreme backwards compatibility, messy architecture (I hear)
Hackers love it
If you're a webdesigner (i.e. you don't use pre-built templates and have basic php knowledge), try Perch from http://www.grabaperch.com instead of wordpress - it's great for smaller or bloggy/newsy sites.
TYPO3
Use if one of these criteria are met
Multilanguage
Larger number of pages
ACL to easily provide different access rights in the pagetree
Flexibility in image handling (strong tools for generating and modifying images on the fly, e.g. changing aspect ratios or resolution later)
Strong community, extendability, support
To master TYPO3 integration fully, quite some time of practice is required.
Actually, TYPO3 is not so complicated. As it has some history, there are lots of stuff, so it's easy to be lost, but we will help You to find the way !
I like TYPO3 bootstrap a lot !
It uses some modern techniques, as Fluid, Fedext etc. There are lots of examples.
You could get it from github, install and play with it.
And TYPO3 Neos will be available quite soon. It's a successor of TYPO3 CMS, which is amazingly simple and powerful, as it bases on TYPO3 Flow framework.
As for me TYPO3 is very interesting in cases, when we need to manage big amount of data / content. Other CMS are more specific, as for me. Drupal I like especially for social sites. Wordpress is great for simple sites.
I consider myself a well trained WordPress template developer, and i recently started to read books and documents about web app frameworks, particularly Django and Ruby on Rails. I didn't know any of the two languages, but i have no problems to learn another one or two. I really don't get the real benefits of using a framework, because i feel very confident about the power of WordPress. So, can anyone tell me the real benefits of using a framework? For example, Pinterest is made using Django, but i think that i can achieve the same results with a WordPress template using Javascript and CSS3. Can anyone tell me the differences/benefits of using a framework in that particular case?
You can achieve the same frontend with Wordpress, but what you will not be able to achieve is the speed and scale - and most importantly, maintainability - of an application based on a more application-oriented architecture.
Wordpress is highly flexible, but it's also slow, and needs an awful lot of TLC to be able to operate at any kind of significant scale. Its design allows for very flexible runtime modification of behavior, but this is also a bit of a Pandora's Box, since it means that code can end up running all over the place for any given page, which makes maintenance a nightmare.
Wordpress is extremely good at being a CMS, but once you start to push it outside of those bounds, you get into trouble, and find yourself having to write your own more abstract framework that runs inside of the context of Wordpress to be able to fulfill your application's needs.
That said, if you have an application that you can build in the context of Wordpress, I'd say go for it! Wordpress can be a wonderful tool for building a proof-of-concept or MVP. If it gets you up and running, then it may be the right choice over writing a full application. However, just be aware that you're going to hit some brick walls as your product design matures and your audience grows, unless your application fits within a rather narrow set of design requirements, so long-term, you may find yourself having to move to a custom application.
Credentials: I've spent the last couple of years maintaining a Wordpress install that served over 25 million monthly uniques, and we had to get very clever to keep it running. We've since replaced it with a Rails application that serves pages somewhere on the order of 10x-30x faster, and is significantly more extensible as an application, allowing us to start exploring application potential that we really couldn't get with Wordpress.
I once made the decision while working in some start-up to choose WordPress for an advanced e-commerce, community-driven marketplace.
It was an awful decision
This is how I was feeling:
At the beginning, it was looking good - you have an amazing community, plugins for everything etc. But sooner than later I hit the wall - at it's root - WordPress is a blogging platform!
Every piece of content technically is a post.
It's really hard to create advanced item relationships
Functionalities are not consistent. Some functions work one way, while others that seems to be very similar work in a different way. Sometimes you need some weird hacks to achieve task that seem to be simple. It makes you read the docs very often to see how a function that you're using for the 1000th time is working. (However, to be honest, I need to say that the WordPress documentation is great!)
The WordPress community is doing a great job, but compared to any regular Framework there is one main difference - Frameworks are just frameworks - they're a set of tools and those tools are there to help you do your project. WordPress already is trying to be something that you might then change.
I'll never again use WordPress for anything that needs some organised, custom functionality.
I'm actually quite impressed with what people has created with wordpress - so if you want to, it is possible and good luck!
It however often feels like buying a truck and rebuilding it to be a house. There are better ways to build a house.
I want to offer a dissenting opinion, even though I upvoted the top answer.
Is Rails really special?
Rails was created by David Hansson who extracted it from Basecamp, software that's replicated in a free Wordpress plugin, WP Project Manager. I think that's a pretty good indicator that Rails developers are underestimating PHP and Wordpress.
MVC and WP
True, it doesn't follow an MVC pattern. But if you use hooks, separate logic (in plugins) from views (in templates), then you'll have good code separation. (Also hint: custom post types are like models.)
Framework vs Application
As you can see, Wordpress can be treated like an application or a framework. It is an application, with all the components you'd expect to find in a framework. Right out of the box you have security, authentication, and extendibility. And it's meant to be extended.
Scaling
WP powers 18% of the internet's websites, including TechCrunch, Smashing Magazine, and (parts of) CNN. Seems there are ways to make WP scale. Disclaimer: I have no experience working on megasites like these, so I'm offering mere conjecture.
WP Future
The current abition of the WP community is to shift WP from a CMS to a framework. I think it's a natural progression considering that all the pieces are in place. And the Wordpress community is going strong.
Not really an answer, but a hint:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks
As if you can replace it completely... I think it is mostly a matter of logic flow. It depends how much imperative (Ruby on Rails) vs. descriptive (WordPress) programming you intend to do.
I don't think wordpress can replace rails, because wordpress have limited set of API and support as you compare it with RoR. Though wordpress is powerful tool for blogging application, but the same effect can be achieved with rails using gems like,
Radiant CMS,
Refinery CMS,
Locomotive.
Adding the power like ttd that can be done vary easily with rails is very difficult with wordpress.
Same with authentication and authorization mechanism like devise and cancan. There is no easy option to do the same with wordpress.
Rails make the programmer's life easier. For whole web app I will always prefer to go with the rails.
Wordpress cannot replace X framework, but the two can certainly complement each other.
For example a WP front end serving up CMS content with an attractive theme is pretty hard to beat; proxy to a back end server for custom content and voila, best of both worlds. Otherwise, WP will inevitably fall short of meeting every requirement and you'll find yourself going down the square-peg-round-hole rabbit hole, a painful place indeed; that's where X framework comes in, filling in the WP gaps.
The notion that WP does not scale may have some truth to it, but for the general case, the 95%, it will handle whatever you throw at it, particularly with WP Cache or other caching plugin thrown into the mix.
Some may say, well, you can build WP with Django or RoR! Heh, heh, you first ;-)
FWIW, I avoid dynamic language frameworks in favor of their statically/strongly typed counterparts. Use WP for the bling, and static X framework for the speed/scalability/safety. Of course, that's a matter of preference, clearly some prefer runtime flexibility over compile time safety. I'm fully in the latter camp these days...
In the simplest term,, I always want to put it like this...
You can use a framework to make WordPress it self and better
But you can't use WordPress to make a framework
Wordpress is a great CMS any way
Pros
1. We can easily set up a website using free themes and plugins
2. There are numerous number of plugins to extend our website functionality
3. Excellent Community support
4. The CMS uses PHP and MySQL, somewhat easy to lean
Cons
1. Updating plugins and themes regularly.
2. Slow
3. Malicious files can be easily injected.
I have to build an Automated Chat Application which will have it's front end as a widget on the website and back-end logic at server. It's main purpose will be to provide an interface to the customers to solve their queries with a chat personnel sitting at a location with the server as the communication point. If there is no person available then the application will parse the string and try to give a few answers by checking among a database.
I have a very good experience in C++ and a little experience in Java. The main concerns of the application are source code security and highest efficiency.
The restrictions which i am facing from the server side is that i have to run it on IIS and the only scripting languages supported are PHPv5, ASP, ASP.NET and FastCGI.
I am not going for PHP since i have found from googling that it's possible to reverse engineer it and it will take me a lot of time to learn a new language, so a strict no.
I prefer going for FastCGI cause it will serve exactly what my requirements are, but i am unable to find a way to compile on windows with C++ or any good tutorial. Most of the results i found on google related to FastCGI development were about Linux or in Perl for windows. I am also unable to find a way as to how to compile it on windows platform.
I am now being forced to go for ASP.NET, which will be my last option since it's an Interpreted Language and Interpreted languages have a tendency to be weak against reverse engineering.
So can anyone suggest me how to go about with it. If there is no way out for FastCGI then suggest me which will be good amongst MVC and WebForms for the given situations. I am new to both of them and i need to complete the application within two weeks.
First things first.
EVERYTHING can be reverse-engineered. It just depends on how smart the guy trying to reverse engineer your code is. Obfuscating is not a replacement for securing your code. If your server side PHP is safely stowed away on your server with all the proper security parameters configured, then you have nothing to worry about. But if you don't know PHP already then fair enough.
ASP.NET is only partly interpreted. The C# or visual basic that you use for the server side code is compiled. What IS interpreted is the code directly on the page. Remember though that most of your logic does not take place there... it takes place in the code pages which are compiled and the page code is mainly for displaying what you have already calculated. But don't forget that any server side tags that you put into your HTML on your pages get parsed and stripped out when the page is served to the user. If you have a tag <%: ViewData["value"] %>, the user will only see the value for "value" when they look at your source, and not the actual server side tag.
You are going to have a tough time learning ASP.NET AND completing your app in two weeks. I personally love ASP.NET MVC, but if you don't have much of a web programming background then it probably isn't the easiest thing to learn in comparison to Web Forms. That said however...
I'm not a fan of PHP, but it is widely used and a great language for setting up simple projects quickly. There are also tons of examples out there and it is of the first web languages that people learn (in part for those reasons). If you have two weeks to learn a language and set up a project, go with PHP. Even with a C background, there is a lot more to web programming than just knowing a server side language, so you'd be best off a quick and dirty language that gets what you want to get done, done, with minimal effort. That is to say, PHP.
FastCGI / C++ has a better performance. If you need a link on how-to: http://cgi.sourceforge.net/ and much more with google search.
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This is not a core programming problem as most posts on this website are, forgive me for that but I didn't know where else to ask this.
I am a beginner in web languages and want to build a small website for our family business, mostly a bunch of galleries that would display our different product lines with prices and some basic specs for customers to get an idea..currently I'm pursuing comp science at the undergrad level
So here is the problem, I can't decide between platforms
I started out with HTML and making a basic mock up but that didn't quite work out as i needed to have dynamic galleries that was quite hard to code by hand and since we need to update often it would be a pain even if I did manage to get it going
then I thought of Joomla as it would be easy to update but soon realized that its not that easy to customize templates
Then I started reading about Ruby on Rails and what it offers and it sounded really interesting might be useful in developing applications that we possibly would need in some time.
so I wanted to know from the community which course should one pursue: DHTML, Joomla, RoR
Please keep in mind that I want this to be a learning experience that will be useful possibly in the future in my professional career and at the same time get the job done.
I would also greatly appreciate any resources or suggestions that the community might have.
You are actually comparing apples to oranges here as DHTML, RoR, and Joomla are not the same thing. You are comparing a mark up language, to a programing framework, to a content management system. You could feasibly learn a CMS (Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress, etc) and never learn to code a single line of HTML or PHP.
For the purpose of getting a site that you can manage and edit yourself, then what you are asking is which CMS should you use. There are dozens of CMSes and opinions on which one is the best. In general are the big 3 - Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal. Wordpress is by far the easiest to learn. It has a very simple admin that shouldn't take more than a few minutes to figure out. There are tons of themes and extensions that go along with it. The downside is that it's coded to be a blogging platform, not an extensible CMS. That means that doing things other than blogging are harder to accomplish (relative to Joomla and Drupal). It can still be done, but the more complex the site, the harder it is to do in Wordpress.
Joomla is the next step in ease of use. The admin is significantly more complex than WordPress, but a tech savvy user will get the basics down in the first couple of hours or so. Extendding Joomla is much easier for both the developer since the framework is specifically designed to be extended, and the user since installing is very quick and easy for most extensions. It's a pretty good balance between ease of use for the admin and ease of extension for the developer.
Drupal is probably the most powerful of the 3, but the trade off is in the user admin. Most non-developers will struggle to understand how the admin works or what taxonomy is and how it works. Again, the trade off is that it allows developers much more power in extending Drupal. Drupal makes it easier for the developer to accomplish much more complex tasks than Joomla or Wordpress.
At the end of the day, all 3 can accomplish the exact same thing on a website. You need to determine which one will accomplish your particular needs the best.
That said, you should still learn HTML and a programming language. My recommendation would be to learn PHP and mySQL. That will give you a solid foundation on which to build on once you are well versed. Other languages and flavors of SQL will come easier, plus many of the large open source projects are done in PHP/mySQL.
Since what you are trying to do is a pure learning exercise, I suggest you look around into a lot of things(rails/css/javascript/php etc) until you finally find the one that you will have fun playing-with. You learn faster when you can tinker with it.
Ruby on Rails may 'seem' easy to an advanced web developer. Its an advanced framework and needs considerable amount of investment in terms of time and interest and most importantly you need to have an aptitude for it. If you REALLY want to do this, and you have a general aptitude for Web programming, I suggest you start with Wordpress. Its search-engine friendly and will get you running in no time.
Learning we development and design is not a small task. It'll take you years to get even moderately good, so if you need to get something up and running now, I'd not recommend you to build it yourself.
There are a lot of nice Joomla templates and plugins available if you are ready to pay a small price for it. Search around a bit more, and you might find something that works for you.
I would start with a CMS such as Joomla or perhaps even Wordpress. Grab a template and tweak it - this will be a good introduction to coding websites as the really hard parts are already taken care of.
Once you have finished the site that you are working on then you can think about moving on to a framework such as Rails or even a PHP based once like Code Igniter. The frameworks will take a lot longer to figure out but at the end of the day they will give you a better learning experience then just tweaking a CMS template.
I would say it depends on your goal. As mentioned they have different purposes. That said I would say Joomla or Rails.
If you are interested in CMS (or design), and don't want/care about getting down and dirty into coding then I would use Joomla and learn what you need to acccomplish your goal.
If your goal is to be able to develop custom web APPLICATIONS, I would probably learn Rails. There is much more of a learning curve but you will get experience with things like html5, javascript (or coffeescript), css3 (or sass), exposure to the MVC model (model view controller) and exposure to Ruby.
But with Rails there is a lot more to learn, but you will have a lot of knowledge.
If you want to go down the rails path, maybe start with a Rails CMS (like locomotive or refinery) b/c they are written in Rails, you could look at the code or have some insight into the CMS. Disclaimer I have not used a Rails CMS (just did some research)
I would choose Joomla. They have a vast array of components and modules that should meet your needs. As far as customization, if you are a beginner this will be difficult no matter the platform. DHTML is not a platform. DHTML is mainly javascript, css and php. I suggest you get some books on doing dynamic stuff with javascript and jquery, styling with css and creating MVC sites with PHP. When you learn all this first your job customizing an whatever platform will be much much easier.
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This question is not about which is the best, it is about which makes the most business sense to use as a company's platform of choice for ongoing freelance development.
I'm currently trying to decide what framework to move my company in regarding frameworks for web application work.
Options are
ASP.NET MVC
Django
CakePHP/Symfony etc..
Struts
Pearl on Rails
Please feel free to add more to the discussion.
I currently work in ASP.NET MVC in my Spare time, and find it incredibly enjoyable to work with. It is my first experince with an MVC framework for the web, so I can't talk on the others.
The reason for not pushing this at the company is that I feel that there are not many developers in the Media/Marketing world who would work with this, so it may be hard to extend the team, or at least cost more.
I would like to move into learning and pushing Django, partly to learn python, partly to feel a bit cooler (all my geeky friends use Java/Python/c++). Microsoft is the dark side to most company's I work with (Marketing/Media focused). But again I'm worried about developers in this sector.
PHP seems like the natural choice, but I'm scared by the sheer amount of possible frameworks, and also that the quality of developer may be lower. I know there are great php developers out there, but how many of them know multiple frameworks? Are they similar enough that anyone decent at php can pick them up?
Just put struts in the list as an option, but personally I live with a Java developer, and considering my experience with c#, I'm just not that interested in learning Java (selfish personal geeky reasons)
Final option was a joke
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2007/11/perl_on_rails.shtml
As you said for the media/digital marketing sector php is the way to go.
I love .Net (it would be my first choice if the target market wasn't a factor).
I would really look for good well rounded developers regardless of their tech or market as opposed to ones with "media/digital marketing sector" experience.
It is possible to find good/experienced/reliable developers with knowledge of multiple frameworks. If this is a requirement, it is of course possible to vet candidates accordingly.
Given that you're referring to freelance development, it would probably make sense to add the dimension of "where the developer is based" into your thinking, as dealing with someone who's a stone throw's away compared to dealing with someone abroad or another city may affect how you work together. This means that where you are based also affects your choice: if you're based in a small town, there will be less quality canditates close to you with suitable skill sets.
I'm currently learning Symfony for myself, and work as a freelance advisor/product developer for a site that's built with CakePHP. Although an experienced PHP developer should be able to make the leap from one of the above to the other quite quickly, there's a fair amount of framework-specific intricacies that can only really be learnt by coming across the problem and then searching for the solution, or by being guided by someone who already knows. Symfony is considered to have good documentation, but I feel that there's a quite a lot in it that's also not in the documentation and that can really only be learnt by doing it.
I also worked for a company quite recently who used Symfony, hired high-quality PHP developers only, and if I recall correctly, it was about a month or two for new guys to get familiar with the code and the workings of Symfony, and start becoming properly productive.
Hope that helps.
In my (heavily biased) opinion, Django is gaining some traction in this sector. Off the top of my head I can think of a number of high-profile news organizations that are making significant use of Django and I've seen reports of organizations utilizing Django for putting up special one-off sites quickly for unique coverage of special events or circumstances. I know firsthand that PBS and National Geographic also use Django extensively for their web properties and I understand Discovey Channel does as well. There is a nice testimonial about how Michael Moore's site was rebuilt quickly using Django: http://blog.concentricsky.com/2009/10/michaelmoore/. I'm not sure if MSNBC has begun utilizing Django internally, but they did acquire Everyblock.
A few others I'm aware of that use Django heavily:
Mahalo
NASA
University of Texas
I've also seen that Django is being used by startups outside the media sector so I wouldn't say it is specialized toward a particular business sector. There are a lot of organizations out there that have been sort of silently using Python internally over the years and so Django is quickly becoming a natural option for web-based services. Python actually has decent roots in the scientific communities, financial sector, and I've spoken with a number of people in the entertainment industry who use Python in their digital effects / post production pipelines.
Maybe not the most riveting content overall, but there is some good info in here: http://djangocon.blip.tv/file/3041158
Look at your clients. Frameworks are just tools, you will have to go with the tool that suits the particular job. This also means your choice to dive into a framework will choose your future clients.
Many SMB shops need PHP because that it is the easiest to host and is interoperable on many layers of "platform" (not just OS, but also supports all DBs etc.)
ASP.NET MVC: I heard a lot of awesomeness about it, I like C# as well. But I can't afford to go only with the options Microsoft provides (database for example) and Microsoft products only really support they own stuff.
Django: Expected to gain huge momentum, but I'll wait until the language itself (syntax) becomes stable.
CakePHP/Symfony: CakePHP is very easy to pick up and is a good choice if it fits all the requirements.
Struts: Quite heavy, I would learn Spring (MVC) instead.
Pearl on Rails: Haven't really used/seen it, so no idea.
You could also consider to learn a framework that is radically different from you current knowledge.
So I love Symfony. It does all I need for a Framework to work fast and clean.
The structure and the architecture is pre-defined so everybody knows where to put stuff, so you can easily work together with a whole bunch of developers.
I would never chose CakePHP over Symfony, because if you have to make changes to a model, you can never again generate code after the development has started.
CakePHP just overwrites everything.
I sure lost all my code a few times. Really annoying.
Symfony just extends the generated code and that is where you develop.
Here you find a good discussion about CodeIgniter (with which I develop at the moment, and it is no MVC and PHP4-based) and Symfony: codeigniter-vs-symfony
The learning curve is a bit steeper for Symfony, but it has enough complexity for all situations I ever encountered.
My next project will again base on Symfony 1.4. And if you can wait, there will soon be Symfony 2.0
ASP.NET MVC, but only if you can use both a frontend and a backend developer for each project. It'll probably be harder to find developers with both competences and you might have to push .net-developers a bit to get them to use MVC.