Web Development

Several years ago no one could speak seriously about ssjs but now: Server side scripting smack down - Node.js vs PHP

And yes, of course, PHP is now the champion. But we will see... Anyway every web programmer needs good knowledge of Javascript.

And about ready solutions - yes, it's simpler and better to use them. But the question was about language. I think it was about Ruby, or Python, or something like in mind.

I think for most people who are getting started in web development, it is best to focus on a something like Word Press, written in PHP (with CSS, JS etc), where hundreds, maybe thousands, plugins are available.

It is much easiler to build an e-commerce shopping cart or recruitment site (as the original poster requested) with Word Press and if the developer wants to go deeper they can easily write PHP, JS, CSS extensions.

Word Press is an amazing free applications with myriad extensions for functionality and themes for the presentation layer. It is best not to reinvent the wheel and to learn by modifying existing code rather than starting from zero. I build a lot of WP sites for friends and all of them are very happy with them. A few go further and actually learn basic HTML, CSS and then on to PHP and JS. All are amazed at the power of WP for a web site.

So, just because someone asked about "language" does not mean we ignore the obvious frameworks and do not share our experiences with actual web development.

As a side note, we recently started a thread/poll asking who on the site actually develops or administers a web site. It is one thing to "talk about it" and another to actually "do it".... folks who actually "do it" tend to use CMS frameworks like WordPress and modify as required. Very few start from scratch.

Many thanks for all the replies. Just to clarify, with limited understanding of all the above:

What seems to be the general opinion is for php to be used server side and for js as browser side. However, it seems it is possibly more time efficient to use an application (which has made good use of these web development languages with ready made functions) and then to change/add any neccessary coding, dependent on requirements of the job or limitations of these applications with pre-built functions. Have i got that right in my head?

So i suppose when it comes to contracting any work out and finding a developer, i would need to check they have experience in applications that make use of PHP/JS (such as wordpress), but then are capable enough to write raw code in PHP/JS should i need my website to do something specific that wordpress can not offer. Have i got this right in my mind?

Also other than what we have been discussing above, can you please advise if i should be asking something else when it comes to choosing someone to work with on website development? Other than the obvious such as having a good rapport!

Thanks again for all your help
Maqsood

Many developers will try to steer you away from solutions like WordPress because they want to make more money coding from scratch or from their own templates and libraries. Others might provide a WP type of solution but try to charge you for a bunch of work they did not actually do themselves.

If you don't have any experience developing web sites; it will be hard for you to choose a developer because you don't have enough knowledge or experience to evaluate their proposal, or to even write a proposal. Also, we have no knowledge of your requirements, your budget, your company, your overall experience; so providing further advise is like try to fire a bullet at a moving target.

I think you have a lot of research and learning to do.....

Others might do so because Wordpress is huge CPU and memory hog.

Maybe... but I have never had a problem with WP and I actually manage a number of web sites that use WP. Memory and CPU cycles are cheap.

Many say Apache is also a "memory and CPU hog" but it does not stop the majority of web admins in the world from using Apache versus another web server

Not cheap enough. I use apache all the time on not all that new hardware, properly tuned it works. I have a home server that hosts various things for myself and friends. It wasn't much but it happily ran multiple different websites/forums/wiki via Apache, some MMO, a bunch of databases, some file storage, folding@home, and much more besides.

When one of my hosted sites wanted to move to wordpress, I needed to upgrade the memory fourfold, the CPU several generations, to accommodate one instance.

There exists tutorials and mods all over the internet for making Wordpress less of a burden, I'm skeptical they'd exist if it didn't waste resources.

I won't mince words. Wordpress is a pig.