Robin's Hood

I project manage the development of websites for my clients. Where possible I like to use an open source package as basis such as Wordpress, Mediawiki, Joomla, etc. and then extend with PHP or whichever scripting language is to hand. Sometimes a project calls for pure old fashioned bespoke and I always go with PHP. It is easy to understand, easy to get resources for (for both development and support) and is ideal for quick cycle time iterative prototyping.

I was interested to read the experiences of Derek Sivers with Ruby on Rails below. He found PHP to be more appropriate to bespoking a website than its younger and sexier cousin.

7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails - O'Reilly Ruby: "I spent two years trying to make Rails do something it wasn’t meant to do, then realized my old abandoned language (PHP, in my case) would do just fine if approached with my new Rails-gained wisdom."