BenEskew.com Just another web developer's personal weblog.

So You’re Developing a Web Application, aye?

When you first decide to create a website you're obviously hit with a first question...

"Should I use a pre-made content management system or does this website and/or concept need its own custom content management system?"

Depending on the type of website this question could be easily answered.

"Does this website need any further customizations than the chosen pre-made content management system can provide?"

The answer to the previous question could be no and then you could choose from a great number of varying pre-made CMS's like WordPress, Joomla, Nuke; just to name a very few, which will get you ready for content immediately.

But, what if you have a specific idea or concept that you want to put into action? Like something a bit more unique than a basic news-style or cookie-cutter web system. Well, then it starts getting a bit more complicated to execute your concepts.

One viable option is to install and modify multiple pre-made scripts which all do the varying tasks that you wish to have. I've seen this done contently with a few of my colleagues' projects. Although, I do not recommend this.

Another great option is to utilize development frameworks, like Zend framework for PHP and Ext JS for JavaScript. This option is great if you are limited to time and money, but can get quite cumbersome if you're also limited to knowledge and experience with these frameworks.

The best option in my opinion is to create everything custom yourself. It definitely takes much more time than other methods but the physical security of the structure of your application and the ease of future updates is better and easier to do in the long run, and is the best option for creating custom CMS's. One major reason to choose this method over a framework would be because usually your own code will be less-bulky and take less overall resources to run. But, of course this method by far relies heavily on the coding skills and habits of yourself or your developers, so always keep that in mind.

In future related articles I'll delve into the world of custom web application development, focusing primarily on custom code development, but I'll also be wading the waters of framework deployment and utilization of pre-made code libraries and their integration into your own web applications.

Stay tuned.