Re: PHP-based design houses PART II

Kit Plummer wrote:

I still think you are missing my point.

Nope, don't believe I am. You want to know if you can spend a lot of money with a large company, request that certain requirements are met, and have one of those requirements be PHP. I don't think anyone out there, large or small, would willingly take your scads of money and not meet your requirements. If you had phrased the question something like "Is PHP the language of choice at Razorfish, et al", the answer would be probably be something like "If that's what you're paying them to use". Is it the tool of choice, regardless of cash? Up to them. Probably not, because: a) they will probably want to enter into a long-term maintenance contract with you, and PHP is easy to maintain; you would eventually figure it out and no longer need them. b) they will probably want to sell you something that they are acting as a reseller for, perhaps a 20K application server. c) large companies are usually aligned one way or another, due to decisions made long ago: "We're an ASP house" or "We're a Java house"; "You come to us, you play by our rules, you pay our prices for that reason." Are there companies out there who are flexible? Absolutely. Are there companies who will look at your scads of cash AND your requirements and say go away, we don't want your business? Absolutely. This entire discussion has less to do with PHP than with simple business: if you send out an RFP _with requirements spelled out_, you will get any one of these responses: a) no thank you b) a reasonable quote c) an absurd quote d) a reasonable quote that doesn't address your requirements e) an absurd quote that doesn't address your requirements Yes, d and e happens all the time. So does b, and so does c. And so does a, for that matter....from major development houses, the cookie cutters of web design, the medium sized developers, small companies and the guys in garages. The proliferation of PHP should never be measured by the number of people who respond "sure" to am RFP that already sets out requirements. Instead, it should be measured by (in part): a) continual growth b) appearance within successful, stable, large sites c) appearance in quotes by development firms (large, small, medium, whatever, as long as they do the job well) when NOT given the pre-requesite, because the goal is to build something stable, fast and flexible. d) and so on.

But, I guess an inferiority complex is pretty hard to overcome.

Sorry that you have one.

BTW: dot-coms are not the only ones out there with web-dev requirements.

Nor are they the ones who go out of business due to absured spending practices. +------------------------------------------------+

| Julie Meloni (jcm@i2ii.com)                    |

| Tech. Director, i2i Interactive (www.i2ii.com) |

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|      "PHP Essentials" & "PHP Fast & Easy"      |
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