No website to post yet, but I wanted some opinions on an idea all the same - apologies if this isn’t the correct place to post, I couldn’t find a truly fitting category for it.
Anyway, Hello =)
I’ve got an idea for a website that I want to make and I’m pondering my options on how and with what to build it with. As I imagine it, it’s a community site that will be populated with user-posted content, have a large user base, and I’d like it to be search engine friendly as well. It’s not a forum.
Some of the features I have require some moderately advanced coding, coding that I’m completely comfortable doing in Flash, but I’m wondering if Flash is the way to go with this one. My gut tells me there aren’t really any “professional” high volume websites quite like I have envisioned that are made entirely in flash. I love flash, but I think most people favor something like AJAX for a search engine friendly site that wants to reach a large amount of users and still be dynamic, yet fast, lightweight, and well-behaved. I’m slightly out of the flash loop though, not having used any AS3 as of yet - is flash better in these departments now? I really don’t know a whole lot about flex and coldfusion either, as far as their performance merits.
I hesitate to use AJAX or some other language / toolset because I have little to no experience with other things, but a great deal of experience with Flash (pre AS3).
Here’s my rundown on the options I’ve considered:
Flash - Most comfortable to build with, can write site engine with relative ease. Not search engine friendly (is this still true?)
AJAX, Ruby on Rails, etc. - Nearly as dynamic as flash (dynamic enough for the site in question), but no experience (have javascript experience though). Search engine and browser friendly.
Joomla! (or other CMS) - Extensible CMS, large portion of site engine written already, but not proprietary, and may have to spend more time extending CMS than it would take to create proprietary engine from scratch.
So my question to you, my fellow developers, is what would you do / have you done? Any insight or tips are appreciated! Thanks.
