#2 PHP platform

[Paul Harman]

PHP version 4 or version 5?

I would personally opt for PHP 5 but that of course limits
the usability of the application.

[Bubblenut]

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It would be possible to build a PHP4 compatable OO
sollution. OK, we wouldn't have the extra features of PHP5
like the extended OO model or the SPL (and much more
besides) but it would mean that when we come to upgrade it
to PHP5 the structure and much of the logic will be the
same. On the other hand, what kind of timescale are we
looking at for completion? If we do not expect the project
to be completed untill, maybe 18months time, it seems a
little pointless to bother coding it in PHP4.
In order to answer these questions I think we have to have a
clear and defined idea of what we want the system to do.

[Piers Karsenbarg]

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At the moment, vBulletin is only written in PHP4. Also, the
majority of people use PHP4 and I think this will be the
"norm" for a while.

I personally haven't looked at PHP5 yet. How backwards
compatible is it? And how easy would it be to write it in OO
using PHP4 and then transfer over to PHP5?

[Paul Harman]

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There would not be a great deal of point of porting PHP 4
code to 5. It's perfectly possible, but to make best use of the
object model in PHP 5 we'd need to rewrite most of it from
the ground up. I agree that PHP 4 is still the norm so we
should probably stick to that, at least to get a feel for how
the app will work.