Why no PHP?

franz1999

I would like to understand why none of the top universities CS department do not use PHP - and not even ASP or other dynamic solutions - for their websites.
Anyone care to elaborate??

rachel2004

Have you considered clicking the e-mail link to the webmaster address for the CS/Math/Engineering dept for the school and asking them directly?

franz1999

although I was more interested to get a point of view from people like this forum members who know a lot about PHP. they might be more able to give me some hint on why such huge websites are completely static most of the time...

rachel2004

Okay, I gotcha, but whenever I see those words, "Questions or comments about this website can be sent to webmaster@... ", I know they're dying for someone to take them up on their offer. ;-)

franz1999

I sent this question to Berkeley, UIUC, MIT, Brown, CMU and couple of others. If they reply I will post here their answers.
For some reason I would think that such a big website would be best managed by some custom CMS system, wouldnt you think so?

rachel2004

Hmm, how do you know they aren't? ;-)

They most likely are using some sort of method to assigning directories to certain departments. Although it's possible, I don't think MIT has one fella with FrontPage 2002 updating everything. Although they are very smart people there, so I could be wrong. ;-)

franz1999

smart people should use smart solutions... this is why i am wondering why they think it is smarter to use static solutions.

One thing you said it certainly right: each research lab has its own directory and they do whatever they want in it, each course has its own folder... but what about all the main pages? Wouldn't make it easier for instance to change the look of the website using a dynamic solution - separating visual interface from content?

rachel2004

Originally posted by franz1999
One thing you said it certainly right: each research lab has its own directory and they do whatever they want in it

Hmmm, I don't see where I said that. I did mention the word directories... that part is correct. ;-)

planetsim

Just because it has the .html or .htm extension doesnt mean its a html file some servers are configured to mask if they have a server side language like with Apache you can MOD Rewrite. Or the .html/.htm extension is put as what the .php would be

Arc

Yah you can configure apache/php to read html files as php files, so it could indeed be dynamic.