Marketing Plan was Re: [PHP4BETA] Help craft PHP description

Mark Nold wrote: > > hi, > > Definitely any official description should focus on the application not the > technology... or preferable a two para description, one covering the > application and another covering the technology. The first should be fully > buzzword compliant so it gets your typical magazine manager excited, and > the second should be full of jargon to get your propeller heads going. > > I know that many will spit on the idea, but has anybody thought of trying > to work out a marketing strategy for PHP? Other succesful languages (not > that PHP isn't) have all had at least a marketing strategy behind them. > Java got a big push in the early nineties, and Perl's creator had a > definate strategy to conquor the world with perl other than just making a > really good product. > What I think is really needed for PHP is not a marketing plan, but rather just a place with marketing information. How often when proposing PHP have you been asked "What other companies use PHP?", or better yet "Why not just use Microsoft's ASP, it has professional support?", or "isn't that technology open source, that's not very reliable, is it?" If we can get a document that answers common questions and then we publicize and distribute that document, then people will be better armed when they ask for PHP. Having a public document like this will also attract people to write articles about PHP. For example, how many people know that major parts of Marriot's intranets run PHP3 and MSSQL, or that Amazon.com uses PHP for its livebid section, or that Island Oasis uses PHP, or Honda uses PHP? Also where can people find benchmarks for PHP, Perl and ASP? Do such benchmarks exist? What else is PHP good for besides web programming? Where are there case studies using PHP? Where is the geek code listing for PHP? The answers to these questions, I would predict, will not only help developers propose PHP, but also will attract reporters to hailing PHP. Also as PHP gets more and more attention it will result in a positive feedback loop. Also note that PHP is only @ version 4, compared to a language like Perl which is currently @ 5.6 (and there was two years between the release of 5.5 & 5.6), it is already getting a lot of attention, and that attention can only grow. I think the best idea for now would instead of having a full, all out marketing plan would instead to have a web site that gives tons of information that promotes PHP in a unified document. Yes, I know there is http://www.php.net/sites.php3 and http://www.php.net/books.php3, but these are seperate documents on there own. I think it might be a better idea to have a second area/website that would give benchmarks, sites, books, security, supported platforms, commercial support (like Zend) and other information about PHP. Sterling