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

Sterling Hughes wrote: > > 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? All that goes hand in hand with marketing. > > 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. > The point of marketing would be that novice developers shouldn't have to fight or research for PHP, they should have heard of it already along with their managers. > > 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 don't think that Perl gets as much attention as Java which is only at version 1.3. I don't even really know the version of ASP (3?). I don't think version numbers or years in existence matters as much in languages as it does in user apps. But I do think the marketing of a language is important. The cream will rise to the top, but it might take too long in Internet time. > 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. > That would be great to have. > Michael