Help please, I need someon who can write PHP

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jordylass
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Help please, I need someon who can write PHP

Post by jordylass »

I have just had a website written in PHP, and I'm told it is badly coded.

I have searched the site but can not find a link to designers, can anyone tell me where to find one, or someone who can give me a second opinion on the code.

Many thanks.
pootergeist
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Post by pootergeist »

why not just ask the person who has already told you it's coded badly to upgrade the scripting?

what have they said already? what manner of bad coding currently exists?
jordylass
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Post by jordylass »

They would only edit the coding if I changed my hosting to them and had them rewrite the site in cold fusion at a cost of £2000.
pootergeist
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Post by pootergeist »

well then, viewing the code without alterations would be a simple case of £N /hr for an hour or two (presuming you're talking the 1villa site which doesn't appear overly complicated).

you might want to proffer your requirement as a project in the jobs section and see what people bid, maybe with an update where neccessary for fee addendum. If you do, it would probably be best to state what transaction processes the site currently uses (whether you are using a gateway cc processor, proprietary code or whatever).

Might even get someone to scan the code for free and advise of the best way forward.

[subnote] you might even find the code is fine and that the cf coding/hosters were just trying it on by saying it was coded badly [/subnote]
jordylass
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Post by jordylass »

That did occur to me as well, as they seem to have been testing it against w3 compatibility.
I didn't realise there was a job section, thanks you.
McGruff
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Post by McGruff »

What is bad code?

A site has to be secure - or at least as secure as it needs to be - and you can't make compromises there.

Apart from that, if the code works it's good. It might look like a dog's breakfast, be full of anomalies, and generally be "badly" designed to the eye of an experienced programmer but then, so what? Nobody cares what's under the bonnet as long as the pages load when they should with the correct information.

Of course it's better still to learn to write "good", well-designed code but possibly the real benefit from that is not to your internet audience but to you as the programmer because the program will be easier to maintain - and easier for others to understand if you ever get some other programmers on board.

I'd be looking for some pretty convincing reasons to spend $2k on a coldfusion update. Did they find any real problems or did it just offend their sense of aesthetics?
jordylass
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Post by jordylass »

I don't know, as I'm not the writer, but they said it had some fatal errors, no DOCTYPE in the html.
Meaning (I think) that the site wouldn't perform the way I hope, with search engines.
Pages aren't showing as they should, email not being received and other stuff like that.
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Post by McGruff »

Pages aren't showing as they should, email not being received and other stuff like that.
OK this isn't just aesthetics: the program doesn't work.

If this was a paid job, and the program isn't fit for its purpose, I would imagine that you are entitled to a refund or to refuse payment. Of course that would mean abandoning all the work to date. You could instead insist that a fully working version be supplied - assuming you haven't already reached the stage where you've decided to stop flogging a dead horse.

A program which you've been quoted at £2k to replace sounds like a large piece of work: I think you will have to pay someone if you want to have it reviewed and that might be throwing good money after bad. If it really doesn't work, I'd personally want to insist on a refund and spend my cash paying an experienced programmer to start from scratch.

To my mind php is the best option for a dynamic website - but coldfusion, asp etc can also do the job.
oldtimer
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Post by oldtimer »

NOPE. PHP is the only way :)

Remember where you are :)
McGruff
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Post by McGruff »

oldtimer wrote:NOPE. PHP is the only way :)

Remember where you are :)
Lol - well of course but I'm trying to be impartial.
oldtimer
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Post by oldtimer »

Not me. I am Partial :) I enjoy PHP and learning it. I am always revising my code to cleaner stuff and improved. I am not at 14 months of playing with PHP.
pootergeist
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Post by pootergeist »

If I understand correctly...

The site backend works ok, except for a few instances where emails are not being received properly (you'd need to get a list of the domains that aren't accepting them and the mailout code for any help there)

Other than that, the only snags seem to be cosmetics and compliancy in coding regimes which as long as microsoft lead the browser war is about as relevent as pancakes at christmas (IE doesn't adhere to the rules defined for XHTML and HTML4.01 so why 'at the moment' should your site?). Having a site validate means very little in the real world except that you should be able to leave it for a very long time and still have it display properly - todays compliant code should display the same in five years time.
It will not help you one iota for getting into search engines.
It will not gain you extra visitors just because it validates.

(note: my own site isn't compliant because my menu systems cannot be validated without adding 10kb to each page - degrades well in all browsers though)

Converting your current site to either xhtml1, xhtml1.1, html4.01 or similar would take, I'd estimate maybe an hour (depending upon template system). Whether or not it is really worth recoding at the moment is another question entirely.
Personally (and I hope you don't mind me saying this) if I was you and presuming you are looking for some work done on it, I'd pester within a design forum and try to further the site image first (currently only the top banner says 1villa, the rest of the page is disjointed). Once a site look (that involves more than just a header banner) is established, you can look toward running a compliant template page, then finally get the backend php sorted to run from the template page code.
jordylass
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Post by jordylass »

Thank you for your comments. I appreciate you all taking the time to look.
I suppose what it really bolis down to is that I'm not happy with it.
It doesn't work as well as I thought it would, and does not do me justice with my competitors.
I will do as you suggest re: design, and look at having the whole thing coded from scratch. I doubt I can get a refund though :-( the guy who did it has worked very hard on it, I just think his level of experience wasn't up to it.
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JAM
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Post by JAM »

jordylass wrote:I doubt I can get a refund though :-( the guy who did it has worked very hard on it, I just think his level of experience wasn't up to it.
imho, how someone works woth a page/site/code shouldn't be an issue.
The coder know what you he/she can handle...
The coder say "Yes" or "No" to work, based on the previous...
The coder are responsible for the results...
The coder take the blame...
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