Not at all. All I am saying is that building things that are already out there makes no sense. Sure, you will learn by building a blog or forum from scratch. But why not build an Android app that has never been done before?

… Besides teaching PHP programming, I also try to teach basic business sense as well!

Stefan

That’s why knowing a good CMS is a good move. It will make you life a lot easier as you will be able to leverage it more easily or more easily decide to not use it … given the project at hand.

Stefan

So, my first thought was to use WordPress for the whole site since it already took care of the blogging portion. However, there was no easy way to create the video lists and add to a page. The plugins I found at the time were much too specific. At that point, I started looking into creating my own plugins, but I found that it would be the same amount of work and then some to learn the WordPress API. Also, as simple as it sounds, what I wanted to do didn’t seem to really fit into the WP architecture.

My final solution was to combine the 2. I build a CMS that manages clients and lists of playlists of videos. The blog functionality is all handled by WordPress…you just drop the post id into the client page of my custom CMS to associate them.

The CMS is very bare bones and was more work than I anticipated. I cut some corners to get it finished as quickly as possible and so I’m not extremely proud of the code…at least some of it. It was definitely a good learning experience though since I ended up using MySql, PEAR modules, etc, etc plus WordPress.

It’s always been my feeling that I should move it ove to a pre-built OS CMS since it would be so much more robust, but every time I start to look into it I’m put off by how over encompassing they are. By that I mean, they just try to do too much to make things easy for you that it limits the flexibility of their use. One thing I’d love to do is to rewrite my CMS and put it out there for those who are put off in the same way as I am about the pre-existing options.

Final thoughts:
– Re-use is always the best way to go if it fits. I definitely disagree that pride is a good reason to write you’re own code. This is business, if you can do things faster than you should! Also, much of programming is based around the concept of re-use, so if you’re missing that you’re really missing fundmentals.
– When it’s not a good fit can be a very bad move so do your research before you make your choice. I’ve heard some horror stories on that side as well!

Thanks for the kind words. Try out my OOP tutorial, people tell me it is the easiest one on the Web:

http://www.killerphp.com/tutorials/object-oriented-php/

Stefan

I believe what lebisol said is 100% true. I’ve had my fair share of having to customize certain CMS’s ranging from video CMSs to news article CMS’s all the way to shopping cart CMS’s and it is a nightmare.

I would rather just make one of each myself instead of delving into the code of a genius-level programmer.

Now granted I don’t have much real world experience (aside from what I stated above) but during my studies I was able to tell, and heck even in the small amount of time I was pitching in at a company, that it is highly unlikely for two programmers to create a piece of software where they use the same methods. In other words, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Each programmer has his own way of programming and if the genius-level programmer has his method of coding then you are going to be stuck deciphering, troubleshooting, debugging, etc. until you understand you either understand his code or become frustrated enough to call it quits (which in turn makes you look bad).

One other good thing about creating your own CMS (whichever kind that may be) is to try and think of HOW you would go about making it. I for one learned a whole bunch by thinking on how to get to the solution for the most common problems, for example:

- If I want a logging system, what would I need? (cookies, session data in a table, hashes/salts, etc).
- If I want to publish news articles how would I go about doing it, or which text editor would I use? (wysiwyg and whatnot)
- If I want to upload photos? Use an open source script like swfupload of make a not so complicated script using PHP.

In essence I learned PHP, MySQL, and some Javascript.

My 2 cents

P.S.

Excellent site btw Stefan. Looking to get into OOP PHP but it is just so difficult for me to understand it since I am a hardcore procedural programmer… ugh.

I do my best!

Stefan

Just because tools/products exist it doesn’t mean that are good in quality even if you pay for them, hence the idea of competition.
Often, the effort to customize someone else’s code and figure out what the author was thinking will take longer than writing your own based on well established programming standards.
And don’t be surprised if you hit the ‘not possible without major redesign’ wall.Look at the WordPress…a great blogging tool but people wanted to bend it into CMS and look where it sits today. Plugins galore and admin nightmare….if your plugins ever get updated. Less is better

On the other hand, it is true..if you just need a simple blogging platform or forum app then it is a no brainier. Wheel has been invented long time ago, just learn how to drive

The most important part is to:
1. have clearly defined goals of what you want to accomplish(build)
2. be aware of your (in)abilities
3. be prepared to accept limitations of existing product (and NOT cry to creators about it)

Clever use of title you little sneaky…