What web technologies to use for a big site?

Hi,
What would be the best choice to build a huge website upon? Should I use a framework or build a completely custom platform?

I'm planning to build a very complex learning management site where main functionalities would be: videos, audios, quizzes, chats, payments, messaging, users can interact with each other.

One of the development companies I contacted said they would use WordPress for this, but I'm not so sure it's a good idea.
The website will have a large user base (millions) very quickly and I expect it to be very busy. I'm not sure WordPress can handle such a big traffic and user activity.

So what kind of technologies or framework would you recommend?

Thanks

 

I have seen Drupal scaled up to handle high-traffic sites. It would be best to find a site that is already doing what you want to do.

Then ask them for some pointers.

 

Framework. For PHP Laravel and also Cake are good options. These frameworks will make it easier to maintain your code base as it grows.

Do not confuse extensive with complexity. The features you named mainly require a programming language to simply retrieve/add/update from a database and output data to a browser. Every and any language can do this well.

I think using wordpress as a platform (or CMS) is fine for a single small to medium web site. But I'm not sure if it would be a good idea to use wordpress if you plan to extend your web app to have all of those above features. You may start to find it challenging or not necessary to use wordpress at all. It could slow you down on development.

Some of the most popular blogs in the world are powered by wordpress. Why would it work for them and not you?
There are many factors that come in to play when determining the load that your site can handle. Not just the language or framework.

For what you listed I would recommend PHP with a popular framework. Personally I would suggest Laravel. Keep in mind if you aren't a programmer/coder and you currently do not know a programming language this is going to be a very long road.

 

Whereas I would advise ignoring @NetStar and @sarahk on this one. These "frameworks" and off the shelf answers tend to be used by people not qualified to work in the host language directly. MOST of the things they do introduce unnecessary overhead, DO NOT simplify the process, and most of the things they do "for you" shouldn't take you any longer to create than actually just learning to use the underlying languages directly.

All they do is force you into certain programming models (like MVC) that don't even fit the host language (PHP) or the task (linear processing of user requests), add more code you probably aren't even going to run, slow down the development process, and layer something else to learn on top of the basics you'll need to learn anyways to do anything these systems don't do "out of box". WORSE, they often prevent you from learning the underlying system or promote bad/broken practices that bring an entire suite of failures to the table. It is AMAZING how agonizingly and pointlessly convoluted these various systems are, in their attempt to make something "easier" whilst being ignorant of how easy the tasks are, much less utter ignorance of how to implement any of them properly.

The MVC model being a perfect example of this. Whilst I applaud the separations of concerns they bring to the table, the "paradigm" they follow doesn't fit how PHP recieves, processes, or outputs requests or the underlying HTTP model. The end result is using ten times the code to "force' the design concept in where it doesn't fit. These "frameworks" like CakePHP and Laravel being the 3 pound lump hammer needed to force the square peg into that round hole.

The end result being that whilst you might delude yourself into thinking a good job has been done and you put in little effort, you are ill equipped for when something goes wrong, when you need something it doesn't do "out of box", and have increased your hosting costs, maintenance costs, and actually made the whole thing harder to work with. It's the trap known as "false simplicity".

But to be fair, I've been programming for four decades, I can code from scratch things that typically take developers using "frameworks" take twice as long to create.

Some developers compare these "frameworks", off the shelf CMS, and other such shortcuts to training wheels, I take it one step further. It's a tricycle. If it's all you ever learn to ride, you'll never go as fast or put on the big boy pants to ride a bicycle. If you're going to do things properly, you're going to need to fall over a few times.

Though as @NetStar rightly noted any way you go about this, you've still got a long, LONG road ahead if you're a total greenhorn. This is not -- nor should it be -- something you pick up in a short period of time. The more you rush it, the more shortcuts you try to take, the more you fall for the "illusion of ease", the more it will cost you in the long run and the faster you will fail.

Part of why I don't like the "shortcuts" that are frameworks. You bypass knowledge you REALLY should have, picking up bad habits, and often end up in completely the wrong mindset to even do the job properly. I will say it's not "as bad" on the back-end with things like Laravel, Drupal, CakePHP, etc, as it is on the front-end though with the mind-numbingly dumbass halfwitted mentally enfeebled HTML/CSS frameworks (bootstrap, w3.css, mootools, etc) created by ignorant incompetent halfwits and used by same. Still, they fall into the same trap and faulty mindset where by trying to simplify it, it just makes getting a quality result harder. Again because in most cases the people who CREATE these "frameworks" didn't actually know enough about the underlying languages to even know if what they were doing was in fact simpler, easier, or even correct.

You go into a situation with a false assumption, insist on sticking with that false assumption even as the facts against it pile up, it shouldn't be a surprise the end result goes bits-up face-down.

 

He should NOT ignore frameworks on this. Should he really reinvent the wheel with every project???? Another hijacked thread by the troll @deathshadow

To the original poster.. use an MVC framework. It will make it easier for you to update & maintain your code base as well as scale. It will provide structure and there are a LOT of code already written for you to assist you with a lot of common functionality found in most web apps. It's insane to reinvent the wheel and even more insane to think you can do it better than the dozens of developers and hundreds of testers of major frameworks.

Oh and don't listen to deathshadow. He has no idea what he's talking about. He's still working on a project from the 90s. He's baked.