[thesite] if anyones bored..

[Daniel J. Cody]

.jeff wrote:


> i'm talking about the sidebar (which is built for *every* page request)
> versus the main content area.  there are now a ton of queries necessary to
> render any given page.  there are definitely some things that could be done
> to improve this situation alone.


for our major pages(article, front page) the majority of query rendering 
time isn't fromt the sidebar queries though(at most they take about 
5-20ms a piece). improving those queries wouldn't really improve the 
overall performance of the front or article pages..


> however, in order for it to be a fair comparison, it'd have to be a
> feature-for-feature match.  a flat page versus a feature-rich cms (and the
> performance you take for those features) isn't a fair comparison.  unless
> you use a completely different application architecture, you'll still have
> to deal with php includes and their requisite performance hit.  again, for
> it to be a fair comparison, the php version of the cms would have to be
> implemented in a similar fashion.
 

on the outside, that seems like a good call. i was talking toa  couple 
people tonite while watching the packer game(doh. :( ) and alot of the 
things we 'hacked' in CF to get the SSURL scheme working(for example) 
would be an easy thing to do with PHP, like d.e.o. we had to pull a lot 
of cool, funky hacks to get that working with CF. its actually pretty 
easy to do that specific feature with a more open language though like 
PHP. thats just one example btw :)

 
> that's all i'm saying.  make it produce the same results, across the board.
> this goes back to what i was saying though -- a fair comparison would
> require the entire cms be written in php to be functionally identical.


well if it produced the same results, whats the big deal? we wouldn't 
need or probably want a alphaboxcontroller.cfm file serving everything 
just to get SSURLS. if we could get similar results without all the 
hacks, thats a good thing, no?

 
> which begs an alternate question -- would it help everyone understand it
> better if it were in another language?  i highly doubt it.  it's a complex
> architecture.  if you're not experienced in the language the application is
> built with, you're not likely to understand the complexities of it.


it may not help people understand it if it were in a different language, 
but the fact is, there are a lot more people that know PHP here. also, 
as explained above, it wouldn't take hardcore hacks with a language like 
PHP to achieve the same results.. the PHP arch. wouldn't have to be *SO* 
complicated. because of that, more people - with an intermediate 
knowledge of PHP - would understand it and could make contributions

 
> sorry to say, but changing languages won't make it easier for more people to
> understand.  it will only change the group of "experts" that are comfortable
> making changes to the application.


no, it won't make it easier for everyone to understand. the point is the 
group of experts would expand beyond 2 people.

 
> as for limitations of the current architecture, there have been a ton of
> things learned about this architecture since we built this version of the
> cms about a year ago.  there are also a bunch of efficiencies we can take
> advantage of in cf 5.0.  additionally, there are things about the cms that
> we understand much better now and could change in it to make it more
> efficient.


what what and what? :)

.djc.