I am thinking about converting findsp.com to PHP is it worth it?

Please let me know the pros and cons.

thanks

Of course it's worth it...there really isn't a question between PHP and ASP ;)

There are even scripts that will do the converting for you

ASP is not bad, why are you thinking of converting it?

ASP to PHP conversion scripts?

Someone got a link to one of these? I'd be interested in checking it out (I'm sure there are some things it just won't be able to convert, but still, anything is a start)

Originally posted by Shannon
ASP to PHP conversion scripts?

Someone got a link to one of these?

http://asp2php.naken.cc/

As for the conversion, I have done it myself. My site was written in ASP and used SQL Server as backend, and a dedicated is the only option considering the amount of visitors I have. I had a Win2000 box costing me $450-500/month depending on traffic , so I signed up for a Rackshack box and converted everything to PHP/MySQL.

As I am an old C/C++ programmer I found PHP to be very intuitive. I'd say it sure was worth it moneywise.

Of course it worth it, it is not too hard as there is asp2php that can do most of the conversion. I bet you'll enjoy PHP and its features, it is a much better language than ASP. :)

I've read about the pros and cons of ASP and PHP...and there is no question that PHP is better! I learned PHP on my own starting from nothing (no programming experience other than HTML)...and got the hang of it within a month or so. PHP is easy to learn, clean (as far as the coding goes), very fast (Access databases can be very slow), easily accessible (it's free to download and most hosts include it in their packages), open source (you can download hundreds of free scripts and change them to your liking without getting into trouble), and the scripting errors are easier to understand. And the number one reason? It's NOT made by Microsoft!!!!!! :angry:

Originally posted by mmarron79
It's NOT made by Microsoft!!!!!! :angry:

LOL. :D

That's the main reason why people stray away or lean towards using PHP. Some people enjoy using a language that has poor security and whose syntax is pretty messed up. :rolleyes:

PHP on the other hand, has a syntax scheme that mirrors that of Perl, and Perl mirrors C, so it's not that hard to get the hang of it. :stickout

I've never done anything like it myself, in fact I don't know PHP or ASP, but if performance, maintenance and money is fine with ASP, it mightn't be worth the trouble. After all, while PHP is supposed to be easy to code in, if you stick with your current ASP scripts, there's no coding at all!

I've read about the pros and cons of ASP and PHP...and there is no question that PHP is better!I question it? Why is it better, and please no "Because it's not made my MS".

PHP on the other hand, has a syntax scheme that mirrors that of Perl, and Perl mirrors C, so it's not that hard to get the hang of it.

That's another good thing about it. I'm taking a class on C++ this semester and knowing PHP has helped quite a bit in my understanding of C++. I've also had some questions about PHP answered in class.

Originally posted by RackMy.com
I question it? Why is it better, and please no "Because it's not made my MS".

1. Supports a wider array of database systems as compared to ASP.

2. Will run on both Win32 and *NIX platforms, as well as RISC OS and Mac OS X.

3. Syntax is not very grammatically heavy, if you know simple C++, you should be fine.

4. The PHP source code is available for download! Make your own modules! :D

5. ASP, as far as I know, has problems with security and frankly, I'd like to remedy that problem as quickly as possible. PHP is one of the solutions.

6. We've got accelerators. :stickout

[add]
Forgot two other OS's that are supported --^

I question it? Why is it better, and please no "Because it's not made my MS".

I take it you're a Microsoft fan? Sorry to add my two cents here about Microsoft and their unfair business practices...but I couldn't resist. Okay, aside from the fact that PHP is not Microsoft. It's still a better solution than ASP. And so far no one here has provided any reason why ASP is better than PHP. So there! :D

Originally posted by priyadi
it is not too hard as there is asp2php that can do most of the conversion.

Have you ever done a whole project with it? Or only a small test page? One day I had a customer who wanted to switch from a NT host to us using Linux/PHP and I did the conversion for some $. I tried asp2php, a nice tool but you end with converted pages with errors in it and for a large project that's simply too much. It really was a pain.

BTW, I prefer PHP over ASP, too.

Originally posted by Walter


Have you ever done a whole project with it? Or only a small test page? One day I had a customer who wanted to switch from a NT host to us using Linux/PHP and I did the conversion for some $. I tried asp2php, a nice tool but you end with converted pages with errors in it and for a large project that's simply too much. It really was a pain.

BTW, I prefer PHP over ASP, too.

A friend uses asp2php to convert a rather large project (IMO), about 20-30 pages. It has some errors in it, but then he doesn't need to recode it from scratch.

It makes sense that asp2php cannot convert a lot of page. ASP tends to require another 3rd party module to do some task. It would be very hard for asp2php to support every possible ASP module out there.

Originally posted by RackMy.com
I question it? Why is it better, and please no "Because it's not made my MS".

If ASP is not made by MS, it wouldn't be as popular as now, really. There are some similar technologies that predates ASP, like server side Javascript. The original poster has a point here, it wasn't the best technology back then, but it won in the end.

Originally posted by Keitarou


1. Supports a wider array of database systems as compared to ASP.

2. Will run on both Win32 and *NIX platforms, as well as RISC OS and Mac OS X.

3. Syntax is not very grammatically heavy, if you know simple C++, you should be fine.

4. The PHP source code is available for download! Make your own modules! :D

5. ASP, as far as I know, has problems with security and frankly, I'd like to remedy that problem as quickly as possible. PHP is one of the solutions.

6. We've got accelerators. :stickout

[add]
Forgot two other OS's that are supported --^

I'm not a great coder either PHP or ASP, but as far as I know you can also use ASP on linux and other os's using chillisoft. Also, I always thought that problems with security do not relate to the programming language but more to the code itself, so a security problem on ASP will only be because a programmer coded a bad code (and correct me if im wrong), and if you talk about bugs and holes in IIS, you can always use chillisoft as I said earlier (there is also a win32 version).
ASP 3 is based on either javascript or vbscript, both are VERY easy programming langauges, much easier than C++ IMO... at least for me. so anyone with basic syntax in any programming language at all can get a hand real quick in ASP just as in PHP if not even quicker, and ASP.Net is even better than ASP (or supposed to be) and it also supports C# (but I never tried that language so I can't comment my opinons on it).
Also, PHP might support a larger array of databases, but when you want to program a web app and the database you want to use is supported on ASP, what does it matter? its not like you change databases daily or something and ASP supports enough databases itself IMO.

Anyhow, Im trying to learn ASP but everyone use PHP cos the best software around for PHP there is is developped by a few guys from my cool country :cool: (www.zend.com).

Good luck on whatever code you choose, cheers :)

Originally posted by IceBlaZe

I'm not a great coder either PHP or ASP, but as far as I know you can also use ASP on linux and other os's using chillisoft.

There are several problem with Chili!Soft ASP.

- It doesn't have some features that Windows version has, MSXML object comes to mind

- Native Windows ASP components don't work in Chili!Soft ASP.

Basically, to extend Chili!Soft ASP, you need components specifically designed for it. It can be extended using Java, but it is very different than in Windows. And extensions created in Java require quite a lot of memory.

Most Internet Appliances run Linux and PHP. They don't normally run ASP. There is a product called Chilisoft ASP that allows you to run ASP scripts on Linux, but it's expensive, and doesn't support the latest version of ASP. Furthermore, all the nice 3rd party Windows DLL's needed to create quality ASP Web sites aren't available on Linux.

PHP comes the closest to ASP in its philosophy of coding. In fact, PHP has an ASP tag emulation mode that we find very useful. The team at Zend.com that is developing the core PHP engine has just developed an ISAPI engine for PHP.

ISAPI is the API to Microsoft's Internet Web Servers, and by supporting it PHP becomes accessible to the many Windows programmers out there (including myself) who want to dip into the Linux market.

My first post here, although I've been lurking for a while!

Surely it is largely down to personal preference? I have seen it argued that one reason PHP is better is because the syntax is better / simpler, as it is based upon C++. Ok, so you are saying that C++ syntax is easier than VB? Sorry, no way! VB is about as simple as it gets. (Almost too simple, in fact.)

And some say PHP is better performance-wise too. Entirely too general an argument to be valid, that one. ASP is not at fault, per se - IIS is! Has anyone ever tried running ChilliSoft's ASP on a Win2K platform using Apache instead of IIS? It flies! The performance gain is startling.

I have used both PHP and ASP and I have to say I prefer the latter. But that is a personal preference, nothing more, nothing less.

Put it this way. If someone asked me whether or not they should convert from ASP to PHP, then unless there is something specific that PHP can do and ASP cannot I would have to say don't bother.