PHP ~ Getting started questions

[dhuesman]

We are looking into developing a few simple "webpages" using PHP. Is there anything out there which is free from a PHP development perspective? Does using the ZEND install past one year cause any challenges or should a company go the enterprise route and not toy with the one year trial?

Thank You.

[chris_hird]

Re: PHP ~ Getting started questions

There are lots of choices. Netbeans is free and you should be able to map a drive over the IFS for your development. The challenge will come when you need to debug PHP code in line with IBM i program calls! But nothing is impossible and you can get away with simple work arounds such as printing variables etc when you need to see what is going on. I have also used the RDi IDE but I keep dropping back to Dreamweaver as I like the tools it has. I would not bother spending a lot of money on an IDE unless you are really going to get the work out of it, a few pages does not seem like an appropriate ROI.

Chris...

[mpavlak]

Re: PHP ~ Getting started questions

We are looking into developing a few simple "webpages" using PHP. Is there anything out there which is free from a PHP development perspective? Does using the ZEND install past one year cause any challenges or should a company go the enterprise route and not toy with the one year trial?

Thank You.

So the Free version of Zend studio is not a 1 year trial but a perpetual license. Run it as long as you like. You will not be able to upgrade the version after 1 year without paying a fee but you can run it as long as you like. For only a few pages it sounds like the right investment. I agree with Chris that there are alternatives out there and you should explore as many as you can.

Regards,

Mike