Does PHP-Nuke Make the Grade?
Date: Monday, January 19 @ 11:48:24 CET
Topic: PHP-Nuke


Its almost been a full year since I dreamed about PHP-Nuke. One question that I had on my mind was whether or not PHP-Nuke could make the grade, so to speak. Lets face it, when I first opened up a PHP-Nuke portal the traffic to my site was scarce. But back then the prevailing question was, did I have the right content that would inspire folk to register and stick around -- contributing and growing the site? So the underlying concern of the portal's engine handling any sort of volume was far from my mind. Instead, I eventually focused on this site.

Lets cut to the chase. From the time of their inception to now, both Computer Cops (almost two full years of operation) and Nuke Cops (just passed its one year anniversary), has seen an enormous increase in volume and user participation. No longer had the question of "do I have the right content" remain unsolved, but that the underpinning infrastructure which delivers the content also find its answer. PHP-Nuke significantly makes the grade for any level of web content delivery and user participation.

Like anyone else, the first immediate clue was the actual presence of phpnuke.org. I mean, check out the stats for 2002. The evidence dictates that PHP-Nuke is a Grade A Premium Choice Cut application. Nevermind that it is Open Source. It competes with the likes of commercial grade portals!

How?

Lets take this to a 20,000 foot level view. Microsoft has its own share of security risks and the owners of the company are that of the richest in the world (even going after 17 year olds to maintain their own). So why does a commercial grade company offer commercial grade products with such overwhelming exploitable and high impacting possibilities of world wide computer damage? PHP-Nuke has seen its share of security risks and vulnerabilities, but in our neck of the woods we can fix them immediately. There is always a wait for a commercial company with closed source codes! I'd say, this is another great benefit to PHP-Nuke! The community is large and participates as a big family.

Hackers come and go. I like to think of 'black hatters' and 'script kiddies' as those who help us to solidify code and enhance security. I say we've been doing a great job at that. And yes, this means there will be more hacks and successful break-ins. This is the way of the Internet. Our purpose is to simply build upon and grow more secure portal code. But that's just me, someone who wants to see the good to all things, in a realistic approach.

For myself I have more than confirmed that PHP-Nuke can handle the load. The statistics both sites have seen prove it. The only difference between seeing phpnuke.org's stats and mine, is that I have intimate experience with the server hardware. And oh, let me tell you, that has been one heck of a doozy.

I went from shared servers to entry level dedicated servers, to entry level dual CPU servers, and now quality grade dual CPU servers. Each time I had to upgrade due to increased volume. Simply put, PHP-Nuke can generate pages as fast as you want it to, so long as you throw the right amount of high power hardware at it. Its like anything else that is software based. One can optimize the code only so much. The next step is upgrading hardware. And oh wow, did I have to learn how to move PHP-Nuke sites efficiently.

One of the biggest advancements in PHP-Nuke has been GoogleTap. It has not only made Computer Cops and Nuke Cops expand its membership due to Google results, but it has also caused Apache to spawn run away processes thanks to heavy mod_rewrite usage and sheer member volume. Thus, another reason why I had to upgrade the servers. A rogue apache client would run rampant on the server causing the load to jump to over 30. Eventually on my first entry level single CPU server I had to write a shell script to monitor serverload and restart apache when it hit '5'. This worked for a while. But the statistics kept increasing on both sites: ergo, upgrade to entry dual AMD CPUs. And again!, recently the volume has doubled and another upgrade took place to dual Intel CPU servers. And even yet the serverload tends to rise on occasion of volume surge.

So what have I learned from all this? There is not a shread of doubt in my mind nor the evidence that PHP-Nuke is a global winner for professional or hobby type portals. It handles whatever traffic you throw at it, from minimal to sheer overload. It is as secure as you want it to be. And it can be as open as you like. And that's PHP-Nuke's finesse: it can be all you want it to be. Simple, elegant, and customizable. You can hack the code yourself, or someone else can help you. Hey, we're all webmasters of our own domains. Each of us know how it was like the first time we ran PHP-Nuke:

awe, inspiration, excitement, jubilation

As seasoned portal veterans, I think its encumbant upon us to stay true to the tradition of PHP-Nuke. Open source community development and knowledge transfer. Its been key to success to date, and it'll continue to drive us into the future.

PHP-Nuke is sheer power with a touch of panache. I wouldn't trade it for anything else to run my portals. I give it two thumbs up.





This article comes from NukeCops
http://www.nukecops.com

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