is PHP the best way to go here?

[jlknauff]

Can someone tell me if PHP is the best way to do this:

(on the VSS (www.vsssleep.com) site) I'm trying to build a dynamic page that a visitor can make a series of choices which will determine the components of their bed-for example, if they sit up & read in bed or if they sleep hot or cold, etc. There are a lot of variables that may change from time to time so it really should run off of a central database. Doing it as static pages with links is unrealistic. I made a little test version in flash a few months ago and it got huge quickly plus finding all the pages when changes have to be made is more than complex.

[Pyrrhonist]

PHP would be a good way to do this, but to be completely honest (and i hate saying this) this is where ASP.NET excels. .NET allows you to refresh "potions" of a page depending on how the options were entered... It's VERY slick and is handled natively.
I think this would be harder to do in PHP than in .NET if that's the kind of thing you're trying to do.

[Cyber-SEO]

Ohhh man i know exactly what you are talking about. I had to do it for a shopping cart system i was building.

We called it the Variant Matrix hehe. It took me about 1 month to complete. It's a huge feature that probably none of the shopping carts have.

I feel that it does not matter which language you do it in, but like Bob said it may be easier to do in ASP.NET. I think the biggest headache you will have for this is figuring out the database structure. From what I found, there is only one right way of doing it.

[Shoemoney]

Php/mysql should do the trick pretty.

Draw out the formulas on paper then map backwards =)

[jlknauff]

Seo Bob, is ASP something that I could learn from scratch quick enough to throw this bad boy together? I'm not what you would call a "programmer" by any streach of the imagination :rolleyes:

[Pyrrhonist]

I don't know - I'm a php guy, not an ASP guy. If you're not already proficient with Java/C++/PHP then I would contract someone. I'm sure there's enough members in the forum that would help you out.

But you might want to go out and buy a copy of SAMS Learn ASP.NET in 12/24/36/48 (whichever one you want) hours. I know Cyber-SEO"s a great .NET programmer - please keep in mind I'm not committing him to your project, or anything like that - he's just the first example that I came up with.

[Greyth]

From what I've heard there is somewhat of a learning curve, even when just moving from "classic" asp to asp.net ...

I'd have to go with SEOBob on this and say if you aren't already familiar witha programming language (.. or don't necessarily want to be just because it's cool :cool: ), you probably want to contract someone for the job.