Re: Social media and RPG

Great question, Kelly. I've been following the IBM i web development
threads with a lot of interest. The CGI approach has a lot of merit on IBM
i in my opinion, and I've been interested in Aaron's RPGUI project as well
as CNX's Valence product. According to CNX, the latter will be introducing
Sencha Touch support in early 2011.

Recently our PR department called a meeting regarding updating our company
website, and they are wanting to use a CMS to maintain the site. They
would also like to introduce options for mobile devices. So I've done
research into the multitudinous open source solutions available. The most
popular ones as you note are PHP / MySQL-based (e.g., Joomla!, Drupal and
Wordpress). If one is needing a CMS with huge numbers of add-ons (e.g.,
blogging, shopping carts, etc.), these projects would seem to argue in
favor of a PHP / MySQL approach. Otherwise, one will have to spend a lot
of time reinventing the wheel. So that requirement has opened my eyes a
little to the advantage of using PHP for web development (and also Java
since there are options available there as well).

With XAMPP, I was able to get Joomla! and Drupal running on my Windows box
in no time. I haven't tried loading either of them on an IBM i system yet,
but since PHP and MySQL are so well supported, I wouldn't think it would
be a problem. The question I have is how well documented the Joomla! and
Drupal APIs are (i.e., books, tutorials, etc. beyond reference materials)
and how difficult it would be to integrate custom programming into the
respective systems (e.g., secure logins & connections, session management,
etc.). It seems like there is more developer materials available out there
for Drupal at this point. Though I have no idea of the quality of the end
result, I also noticed that Joomla! has an extension to create a mobile
version of a website (MobileJoomla!) with little to no effort.

Blake

Blake Butterworth | Senior Programmer Analyst | Kansas Turnpike Authority
| 9401 E Kellogg | Wichita, KS 67207 | (316) 652-2740



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date: Thu, 11 Nov 2010 11:06:27 -0600
from: Kelly Cookson <KCookson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: [WEB400] Social media and RPG

I'm all for people having the tools to roll their own social media on the
IBMi. Different strokes for different folks.

However, if I personally needed to run social media on an IBMi platform,
I'd look at running open source packages via the Zend PHP server and MySQL
database.

I've used Drupal on other platforms and like it quite a bit. Drupal
provides polls, forums, blogs, wiki books, wiki-like pages, customizable
user profiles, contact pages, and RSS feeds all out-of-the box and
administered by a menu. There are also many modules you can install to
enhance Drupal capabilities.

I also like MediaWiki--the same wiki software used by Wikipedia. People
who are familiar with Wikipedia feel right at home with MediaWiki. There
are also extensions to enhance the capabilities of Mediawiki.

There are other packages such as WordPress and Joomla that should, in
theory, run on the IBMi via Zend PHP and MySQL. Also, there are a number
of bulletin boards and email lists that are written in PHP and use MySQL.

I'm curious if anyone has used the Zend PHP server and MySQL database to
run Drupal and/or MediaWiki on the IBMi.

Kelly Cookson
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Dot Foods, Inc.
217-773-4486 x12676
www.dotfoods.com