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Op-Ed: Does PHP-Nuke Make the Grade? |
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 Its almost been a full year since I dreamed about PHP-Nuke. One question that I had on my mind was whether or not PHP-Nuke could make the grade, so to speak. Lets face it, when I first opened up a PHP-Nuke portal the traffic to my site was scarce. But back then the prevailing question was, did I have the right content that would inspire folk to register and stick around -- contributing and growing the site? So the underlying concern of the portal's engine handling any sort of volume was far from my mind. Instead, I eventually focused on this site.
Lets cut to the chase. From the time of their inception to now, both Computer Cops (almost two full years of operation) and Nuke Cops (just passed its one year anniversary), has seen an enormous increase in volume and user participation. No longer had the question of "do I have the right content" remain unsolved, but that the underpinning infrastructure which delivers the content also find its answer. PHP-Nuke significantly makes the grade for any level of web content delivery and user participation.
Like anyone else, the first immediate clue was the actual presence of phpnuke.org. I mean, check out the stats for 2002. The evidence dictates that PHP-Nuke is a Grade A Premium Choice Cut application. Nevermind that it is Open Source. It competes with the likes of commercial grade portals!
How?
Lets take this to a 20,000 foot level view. Microsoft has its own share of security risks and the owners of the company are that of the richest in the world (even going after 17 year olds to maintain their own). So why does a commercial grade company offer commercial grade products with such overwhelming exploitable and high impacting possibilities of world wide computer damage? PHP-Nuke has seen its share of security risks and vulnerabilities, but in our neck of the woods we can fix them immediately. There is always a wait for a commercial company with closed source codes! I'd say, this is another great benefit to PHP-Nuke! The community is large and participates as a big family.
Hackers come and go. I like to think of 'black hatters' and 'script kiddies' as those who help us to solidify code and enhance security. I say we've been doing a great job at that. And yes, this means there will be more hacks and successful break-ins. This is the way of the Internet. Our purpose is to simply build upon and grow more secure portal code. But that's just me, someone who wants to see the good to all things, in a realistic approach.
For myself I have more than confirmed that PHP-Nuke can handle the load. The statistics both sites have seen prove it. The only difference between seeing phpnuke.org's stats and mine, is that I have intimate experience with the server hardware. And oh, let me tell you, that has been one heck of a doozy.
I went from shared servers to entry level dedicated servers, to entry level dual CPU servers, and now quality grade dual CPU servers. Each time I had to upgrade due to increased volume. Simply put, PHP-Nuke can generate pages as fast as you want it to, so long as you throw the right amount of high power hardware at it. Its like anything else that is software based. One can optimize the code only so much. The next step is upgrading hardware. And oh wow, did I have to learn how to move PHP-Nuke sites efficiently.
One of the biggest advancements in PHP-Nuke has been GoogleTap. It has not only made Computer Cops and Nuke Cops expand its membership due to Google results, but it has also caused Apache to spawn run away processes thanks to heavy mod_rewrite usage and sheer member volume. Thus, another reason why I had to upgrade the servers. A rogue apache client would run rampant on the server causing the load to jump to over 30. Eventually on my first entry level single CPU server I had to write a shell script to monitor serverload and restart apache when it hit '5'. This worked for a while. But the statistics kept increasing on both sites: ergo, upgrade to entry dual AMD CPUs. And again!, recently the volume has doubled and another upgrade took place to dual Intel CPU servers. And even yet the serverload tends to rise on occasion of volume surge.
So what have I learned from all this? There is not a shread of doubt in my mind nor the evidence that PHP-Nuke is a global winner for professional or hobby type portals. It handles whatever traffic you throw at it, from minimal to sheer overload. It is as secure as you want it to be. And it can be as open as you like. And that's PHP-Nuke's finesse: it can be all you want it to be. Simple, elegant, and customizable. You can hack the code yourself, or someone else can help you. Hey, we're all webmasters of our own domains. Each of us know how it was like the first time we ran PHP-Nuke:
awe, inspiration, excitement, jubilation
As seasoned portal veterans, I think its encumbant upon us to stay true to the tradition of PHP-Nuke. Open source community development and knowledge transfer. Its been key to success to date, and it'll continue to drive us into the future.
PHP-Nuke is sheer power with a touch of panache. I wouldn't trade it for anything else to run my portals. I give it two thumbs up.
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Posted on Monday, January 19 @ 11:48:24 CET by Zhen-Xjell |
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Average Score: 2.45
Votes: 11
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Re: Does PHP-Nuke Make the Grade? (Score: 1)
by pythagoras on Monday, January 19 @ 12:46:05 CET
(User Info | Send a Message) | For me, a novice at the implementation of the complex system which phpnuke has proven itself to be, i would have to say that it doesn't cut the mustard. I have been trying to get a skeletal phpnuke6.9 site on my home network (well, ok, my dell laptop) running mandrake9.2.
I have followed all the install instructions to the best of my ability, but to no avail. I would say that if you are an experienced hacker, or know someone who has phpnuke running _and_is_committed_to_the_knowledge_transfer_ referenced above, then you have a good chance of getting it up and running. Evidently, anyway. If you are trying to learn a new thing, however, be prepared for a sttep learning curve. |
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Re: Does PHP-Nuke Make the Grade? (Score: 1)
by kjcdude on Monday, January 19 @ 15:44:53 CET
(User Info | Send a Message) http://kyle.theocsucks.com | Good article!!!
I would agree that PHP-Nuke cuts the grade, i am currently running 3 php-nuke sites and have gone through some major strugles but all were worth it in the end.
I have built some of my own sites but without the full knowledge of PHP i turned to PHP-Nuke and have not regreted it since.
Good job ZX on your fantastic support for the PHP-Nuke community! |
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Re: Does PHP-Nuke Make the Grade? (Score: 1)
by Kenpro on Monday, January 19 @ 15:57:52 CET
(User Info | Send a Message) | Nice to hear you talking like this, but you are forgetting Mr. ChatServ, as he was responsable
for most of the succes of this site as of his updates.
I don't give a shit about your server or site, I care for the good work of ChatServ, why didn't you mentioned him in your article ? and the other staff ? |
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Re: Does PHP-Nuke Make the Grade? (Score: 1)
by Vchat20 on Monday, January 19 @ 19:36:01 CET
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.pokeradio.com/ | i have to agree. phpnuke definitely has made the grade for me. and this is relevant with my latest site, The Sims Park Mall (http://www.pokeradio.com/tspm/).
first edition of the site was simple html. two frames. one for navigation, and another for the main content. it worked, but wasnt very proffesional looking.
second edition, i went to an actual paid (cheap) template, which was html. just used the template and made the seperate pages. looked really nice, but in this case was a major pain to edit each and every page every time i had to change the navigation bar.
third edition, which really wasnt released per say, was with phpwebsite. tried and tried but unfortunately i had no luck getting it to do what i wanted. VERY steep learning curve.
4th and latest edition i finally gave in and went to phpnuke. and so far its been a breeze. i had no problem making a custom navigation block simply using the blocks admin and using pure html. making my custom mall module was very easy and only took me like 10 minutes to do. so far i have no plans to change to anything else. if anyting a new logo and theme is something im looking forward to.
and using phpnuke on my other website as well (PokeRadio @ www.pokeradio.com), phpnuke definitely makes the grade. no doubt. |
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Re: Does PHP-Nuke Make the Grade? (Score: 1)
by snarfies3 on Monday, January 19 @ 21:32:26 CET
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.temple-anime.org/erik/ | I've largely moved away from PHPNuke in favor of Postnuke. Reasons:
1) PHPNuke is messy to modify. Adding a new module usually involved uploading files to 5-6 different directories, and then sometimes modifying existing core files to boot. If I go through all that and then decide I don't like the module after all, uninstalling it can be a major headache. 99% of Postnuke modules are completely self-contained.
2) For a "Content Management System," PHPNuke doesn't handle content very well. I can put things in "sections" or "content," but both are preformatted in ways that I don't want. Now, Postnuke shares this flaw, but at least Postnuke has excellent addons like Content Express (http://www.xexpress.org/). The only thing of its like that I ever found for Postnuke was CWC Coverpage, and that has a number of ugly flaws as well.
3) I'm sure it isn't news that PHPNuke is a security mess. Yes, nukecops' patches help - unless you need to install a module that wants to modify something that the patch has already modified in a different way, see item 1. |
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Re: Does PHP-Nuke Make the Grade? (Score: 1)
by djblade311 on Sunday, January 25 @ 01:57:51 CET
(User Info | Send a Message) http://www.thedjgroove.com | | I have 3 or 4 sites running PHP-nuke and have used php-nuke since version 5. Those who seem to experience installation issues ALL the time, either don't follow instructions or have different platforms for their web server and database setups. I used to experience issues on my first install but that was because I was a newbie to PHP. It is incredibly easy to add new modules, WITHOUT having to upload to 4 or 5 directories. I love it. THANK YOU TO ALL (including mr ChatServ). |
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