What did you use to build your project?

[Digital]

This is a more generalized topic, but what did you base your project on when you started:

• Mysidia Adoptables
• Laravel
• Plain PHP
• Pet Site Framework
• Other (what did you use)

I am curious to see what our  @Programmer used!

[Jared]

I attempted to build projects on frameworks previously. I actually tried out CodeIgniter, but I could never get the hang of it. I'm really used to building my own framework and backends, then expanding on that. So, I took the route of Plain PHP. 

[LostEscape]

I feel most comfortable with just plain PHP. However, when I first started learning to program, I used a website known as AvidGamers (Has been gone for years), moved to AG2 (also gone for years), then moved to AcornRack (also, gone for several years lol). So when I first started learning, I used those as a basis. Nowadays I feel most confident with my own PHP.

[Kesstryl]

For my dragon RPG game I'm using an old php game engine called Dragon Knight which I updated to be PHP 5.6 compliant, and using mysqli.  I also added a bunch of much needed security features to the engine.  If and when I begin my pet game idea, I'm most likely going to use Mysidia Adoptables.  

[Anoua]

Eliyo I designed on Laravel which I am still satisfied with. I initially started with Laravel 4 which was fairly new at the time. But now it's on Laravel 5. That update was a pain, but I was glad to finally get the switch over with.

For Animal Acres it came with just plain PHP. And it's currently a bit of a hodgepodge. I am converting to Fat Free Framework for the base. So page by page have been switching over to using the framework following a model view controller paradigm instead. 

When I first started the conversion I was using fat frees object relational mapper for the database, but have since added Laravel's Eloquent to Animal Acres as well and like that a lot better. Fat Free's is very clunky and limited, always felt like it was slower down development so was a good switch. But does mean some areas use fat frees, some use eloquents and some of my models are duplicated as well right now. I also added blade (html template language from laravel) to fat free recently and that has been a welcome switch too. But again does mean my base template is a bit odd to account for it's different uses, plus the duplication from pre fat free area that haven't fully been migrated yet. 

[Kesstryl]

3 minutes ago, Anoua said:

Eliyo I designed on Laravel which I am still satisfied with. I initially started with Laravel 4 which was fairly new at the time. But now it's on Laravel 5. That update was a pain, but I was glad to finally get the switch over with.

For Animal Acres it came with just plain PHP. And it's currently a bit of a hodgepodge. I am converting to Fat Free Framework for the base. So page by page have been switching over to using the framework following a model view controller paradigm instead. 

When I first started the conversion I was using fat frees object relational mapper for the database, but have since added Laravel's Eloquent to Animal Acres as well and like that a lot better. Fat Free's is very clunky and limited, always felt like it was slower down development so was a good switch. But does mean some areas use fat frees, some use eloquents and some of my models are duplicated as well right now. I also added blade (html template language from laravel) to fat free recently and that has been a welcome switch too. But again does mean my base template is a bit odd to account for it's different uses, plus the duplication from pre fat free area that haven't fully been migrated yet. 

What will the benefit be to transitioning a game already fully developed with its own PHP to a framework and putting all that work in?  Just curious

[Anoua]

@Kesstryl The game is fully developed in some sense, but it's not really complete. Being a web game there are always things to update or new additions to add. And it's an old game, so as I go through updating it allows me to update things to modern standards, making it more attractive and user friendly as well. And doing it in part like this allows the live site to stay running even as different areas are refactored. 

If I wasn't planning to make maintain it or make any updates/changes then it wouldn't really be worth it. But the idea is to get it up to date for the modern audience.

[PaulSonny]

I don't think you can beat good old plain PHP - but i'm getting more and more comfortable with frameworks like Laravel and can see the benefits...

[Dinocanid]

I've been using Mysidia Adoptables to build both of my sites. It saves me a ton of work that I otherwise would have spent months on, and it's relatively easy for me to expand on.

[Design1online]

There are a lot of benefits to a framework. You get lots of low level functionality you don't have to write yourself, someone else keeping the framework up to date with current standards, and usually a lot of convenience functionality like safe request variables, different built in extensions for caching mechanisms, a whole group of people bug fixing and troubleshooting issues with it, as well as familiarity of other developers with it if it's a large framework. The idea is to reduce your amount of development time for what is typically mindless setup of a good, secure website.

Writing your own is fine too, it just takes many, many years to get to something that is really solid and bug free and well secured and optimized. However if you write your own framework people will have to learn it before they can start developing on it so having a lot of comments and good documentation is key.

Edited October 27, 2017 by Digital
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