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Creating your startup from scratch.
Part 2 – Language, Frameworks & CMS

Choose your language

First of all there are 3 questions you should ask yourself ( by @JoeStump ):

• Can you find developers?
• Is it widely supported?
• Does it makes you happy?

Forget about performance issues ( PHP Doesn’t Scale, nor Ruby, nor Perl… ) because languages don’t scale. It’s not really important to make your code 300% faster, it’s not where your bottlenecks are. So instead of finding out the best ever existing programming language you better spend your time thinking about one which of them will make your life easier.

I choose PHP. I’m not saying it’s better or faster, it’s just the language I’ve working on for the last years. There are many resources for PHP on internet to help you master it and get the best from it.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Now I recommend some investigation. Can I implement my idea in any of the already developed technologies? Can I use a Content Management System for my project? You should really consider about using an existing CMS and apply the necessary modifications better than develop all your idea from scratch.

A Content Management System (CMS) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, search and publish various kinds of digital media and electronic text (via Wikipedia)

Some of the best Open Source CMS are:

1. Silverstripe (PHP, MySQL)
2. Joomla!(PHP, MySQL)
3. Drupal (PHP, MySQL)
4. Plone (Python, MySQL)
5. Alfresco (Java, MySQL)
6. Wordpress(PHP, MySQL)
7. OpenCMS (Java, MySQL)
8. Mambo (PHP, MySQL)
9. Typo3 (PHP, MySQL)
10. e107 (PHP, MySQL)
11. Liferay (Java)
12. DotNetNuke (.NET)
13. MODx (PHP, MySQL)
14. XOOPS (PHP, MySQL)

They are all pretty customizable (using plugins) and with no big modifications you can have your site up and running in nearly no time.

My application is too complicated! CMS are not for me

Depending on the needs of your application maybe a CMS won’t be useful for you. It’s time to choose a programming framework. A framework is an abstraction in which common code providing generic functionality can be selectively overridden or specialized by user code providing specific functionality.

It’s the base for all your code with additional objects to help you deal with the different problems you may encounter during the development. Some important features to look for in are:

• MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern
• Templating
• Caching
• Security
• Database abstraction layer
• Filesystem access
• Form Validation
• Inbuilt CMS
• Inbuilt auth

Known PHP frameworks ( via One2 )

• Yii
• CodeIgniter
• CakePHP
• PHPDevShell
• Akelos
• Symfony
• Prado
• Zend
• ZooP
• QPHP
• KohanaPHP

Other Frameworks:

• JNI (Java)
• Twisted (Python)
• Spring (Java)
• TrueView (.NET)
• BFC (.NET)
• Ruby on Rails (Ruby)

As you can see I always try to use any known technology. Here you can find a complete list of frameworks

Sources :

15 Open Source Content Management Systems
Choosing a Framework

Creating your startup from scratch.
Part 1 – Choosing a domain name

In the last ten years I’ve been involved in the making of many web projects, some of them big sites involving a large team of developers and high loads of traffic. Even though I started writing HTML inside the PHP files (I know, I was young, I needed the money…), I have learned a lot since then, and it’s time for me to share this knowledge and write down the process to create a brand new startup. I hope it’s useful for some of you. Anyway I know I will learn a lot writing these posts.

Part 1 – Choosing a domain name

Maybe the hardest part. If you are reading this probably you had a good idea, but when tried to register the domain name for your idea that name was already registered. Even some variations on your idea were not available also. I won’t talk here about domainers and how they kill the initiative of most entrepreneurs, but I’ll try to help you find the right domain for your startup.

First of all some tips about the domain name:

1. Choose 5 keywords of your business to generate the domain name
2. The domain name must be unique (no other business with the same name or similar)
3. Your Brand should be your domain name (change your brand if necessary & possible)
4. Try to make it short. It must be easy to spell, remember and type
5. Only Choose Dot-Com Available Domains (not if you run a local business)
6. Reject Hyphens and Numbers
7. Be careful with phonetically similar names (and register them also if possible)
8. Forget about 2.0 names (unless you have big money for marketing)

Find your keywords

There are a few free keyword suggestion tools base on search results

1. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
2. https://account.uk.miva.com/advertiser/Account/Popups/KeywordGenBox.asp
3. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
4. http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_suggestion_tool.php

Keyword based Domain name generators

You can find several tools to help choose a domain name based on your keywords:

1. http://www.makewords.com
2. http://www.nameboy.com
3. http://www.dotomator.com
4. http://www.bustaname.com
5. http://www.123finder.com
6. http://www.rwm.net/wizard.htm
7. http://www.eyeondomain.com/search.html

Choosing the right domain name

At this point you may have at least 10 possible available domain names, now you should let other people help you. Never do this alone, make a poll between people you know (friends, family…. ). The more people involved the better will be the domain name (always include a SEO in this stage of the project)

Final notes

Do your best to avoid buying an existing domain, be creative and make up your own brand. This is just the first step and can be really hard sometimes. Don’t give up, it’s just the beginning and the best is yet to come.

Take your time, if everything goes fine this domain name will be with you for a long time.

Take a look at your competence, they can give you great ideas.

Think about the evolution of your business, Are you going international? Does your domain name suits the new market  needs? Can be translated?

The Compulsive Entrepreneur, the Mercury Syndrome

Being an entrepreneur it’s not only a professional choice, it’s not about accumulating the basic knowledge which helps you create the perfect site or the business of your life. It’s really a question of attitude, or call it obsession if you prefer.

At the beginning you perceive only small pieces of this obsession. While waiting for your order to be served in you favorite restaurant you start planning about how to improve the waiter’s efficiency by optimizing the number of trips to the kitchen, then you think about a better way to rearrange the food in the bar to increase the profits and end up building a site to sell fast food online.

Next clue comes when during a romantic dinner, after two or more glasses of wine, you start talking about the future and the startups you’re planning to fund or the sites you’d like to develop. That’s when you realize about your real potential as entrepreneur (and you also realize she stopped listening after the dish was served).

Then it’s done, you’re in and there’s no way back. Your mind creates a parallel mental process dedicated only to analyze the reality around you, looking for the business to be and the idea that will make you rich someday. You don’t realize it but it’s right there in you brain, processing information, changing the point of view to reinvent an old idea and make it the business hit of the year.

I don’t know if any prominent psychologist has already studied this case, who cares anyway, I’ve decided to give it its own name. From now on this mental state will be known as “The Mercury Syndrome”.

In the roman mythology, Mercury was a messenger and a god of trade, profit and commerce. It’s perfect as the improvised herald of this new mental illness, which by now, has no known cure…

Another Blog? Where Business meets Twitter

Hello Everybody and welcome to my brand new Blog. A blog about business, entrepreneur, web development and  Twitter.

This is my place to write about my adventures while trying to be a real entrepreneur. This is where I’ll debate with myself (and hopefully with some of you also) about web tendencies, running business, entrepreneurship and Twitter.

Did I mention Twitter? That’s because one of my projects (the one which will lead me to the high life) is a Twitter mashup. I’m talking about Twittexperts, a community of experts sharing their expertise via Twitter. I’ll write about the business model behind it in another post.

I hope you enjoy this blog!