Example of large application done right?

glen_ap

Hi all. I am building a new application and am evaluating different technologies. I was wondering if anyone can recommend a large application in PHP that was "done right" so I can look at the source code to evaluate it.

This is not a "What is the best language?" question. I simply want to look at an application that is easy to extend/modify/maintain and compare it to some other applications done in other languages. Some thoughts I have had are Phorum, phpBB, and SquirrelMail.

Thanks,
Glen

BuzzLY

Take a look at PHPbb. Done quite well, and quite extensible imho.

Weedpacket

Something I tend to wonder: how is the size of an application measured? You sometimes hear about "large sites", for example, and they turn out to be pretty simple (4-5 pages), but with a big but simple db behind it.

Hm? Oh, SourceForge (a currently more active (at least openly) branch from that development is GForge). I'm not giving an opinion on that one (I've yet to look at it that extensively); but I will say that last time I looked, TWIG was an example of how not to write a large application.

glen_ap

Originally posted by Weedpacket
Something I tend to wonder: how is the size of an application measured? You sometimes hear about "large sites", for example, and they turn out to be pretty simple (4-5 pages), but with a big but simple db behind it.

You are quite right in questioning that, and I normally avoid using subjective descriptions. What constitutes a large site? Is it measured in number of pages, number of projected users, or some other metric?

Well, let me reclassify by stating it has an expected user base of 25,000 the first year and expects significant growth afterwards. I approximate 30 pages interacting with a database and a handful of static pages.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by glen_ap
Well, let me reclassify by stating it has an expected user base of 25,000 the first year and expects significant growth afterwards. I approximate 30 pages interacting with a database and a handful of static pages.

Well, SourceForge certainly qualifies on all those counts; there's a PHP clone(?) of Slashdot's Slash, but I don't know if it scales as well 🙂

BuzzLY

I took "large site" to mean "lots and lots of php." PHPbb isn't a "site," but a suite of applications, and has a TON of php pages. Some is ok, some is done quite well. If that's what you are looking for, then take a look at that.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by BuzzLY
I took "large site" to mean "lots and lots of php."

Actually the original question was for "large application"; but sometimes the "size" of an application ends up getting measured by the amount of content on a typical site driven by it. In this case, activity levels are also relevant. For example, I don't know how big (in lines of code) vBulletin is, but it also qualifies as "large" in terms of user base, but they're spread pretty evenly around the world, and less than 3% are logged in at any one time (usually much less).