[heyoman1]

How does the industry view Django and/or Rails as an alternative to PHP? I find PHP somewhat hard with the many confusing functions and whatnot. I do know some fair Python, but not Ruby.

[dorknexus]

For starters, PHP is a language and both Django/Rails are web frameworks. If we are going to compare apples to apples we should try to compare it to a given PHP framework.

[moopet]

Well from a Django perspective - it's harder to find hosting. It's harder to move existing projects to because clients don't like the idea of upgrading their hosting packages or moving servers. Other than that I have no idea how the "industry" views it but personally I think it's a much better way to go.

[Sergio Tapia]

PHP -> Zend / CakePHP
Python -> Django
Ruby -> Rails

I've used Rails before and it's scaffolding is very sweet, loved using it. You can't find decent hosting for Django and it's somewhat of a neglected framework in the mainstream developer community.

[girasquid]

moopet, on 20 December 2010 - 01:08 AM, said:

Well from a Django perspective - it's harder to find hosting.

Sergio Tapia, on 20 December 2010 - 04:50 AM, said:

You can't find decent hosting for Django and it's somewhat of a neglected framework in the mainstream developer community.

With all due respect, I don't think you guys have investigated Django hosting thoroughly enough.

Hosting a Django site usually requires a bit more fiddling than a shared hosting account allows you - however, if shared hosting is your thing both DreamHost and WebFaction support Django. Djangy is also working on building a Heroku-for-Django. That being said, a VPS or dedicated solution is generally a better way to go if you're planning on building anything big.

The recommended VPS providers for Django hosting are generally Linode, Slicehost, and Rackspace Cloud Servers (in that order).

Personally, I've found that once you demonstrate the benefits of switching to Rails or Django from someone's home-grown PHP CMS/shopping cart/mailing list manager, there tends to be little resistance (if any). Being able to say "oh, you need to be able to log in and secure some pages? Give me 15 minutes!" usually seems to do the job (at least, on the projects I've worked on where the client was unsure).

I think ultimately it comes down to whether you can clearly demonstrate that Django or Rails solves the client's problem 'better'. When the client sees that you're pitching the technology because you understand their problem and see a better solution (and not just because that technology choice is your hammer for every nail), there isn't really any resistance to using one of them over PHP (again, as long as it demonstrably solves their problem).

[dorknexus]

If you can't find "django hosting" then just rent out a VPS. I get one for like $6 a month through prgmr.com and it is sweet let me tell you.

[moopet]

girasquid, on 20 December 2010 - 01:35 PM, said:

With all due respect, I don't think you guys have investigated Django hosting thoroughly enough.

I know it's easy enough to find hosting for whatever you want if you start from scratch. However, a lot of clients (in my admittedly brief experience as a web developer) already have some sort of hosting when they approach you. It then becomes a challenge to try to see what their host provides which is up to the task and get them to upgrade. The relatively tiny cost per month to upgrade suddenly seems important to them even though they're paying orders of magnitude more for the development in the first place.

[girasquid]

moopet, on 20 December 2010 - 11:18 AM, said:

girasquid, on 20 December 2010 - 01:35 PM, said:

With all due respect, I don't think you guys have investigated Django hosting thoroughly enough.

I know it's easy enough to find hosting for whatever you want if you start from scratch. However, a lot of clients (in my admittedly brief experience as a web developer) already have some sort of hosting when they approach you. It then becomes a challenge to try to see what their host provides which is up to the task and get them to upgrade. The relatively tiny cost per month to upgrade suddenly seems important to them even though they're paying orders of magnitude more for the development in the first place.

That's true - most of my projects the client comes fully prepared to switch to hosting on whatever I recommend. I see what you mean about the friction of switching hosting providers.