web2py for freelance work

[spiffytech]

I'm picking out a framework to use for freelance web development. Does
anyone use web2py in that sort of situation? How does it fare? Do you
find anything particularly limiting or particularly easy? How do
clients respond when you tell them you're building the site in Python
(not PHP), and that you're building it in one of the less-common
frameworks?

[Ismael Serratos]

Hi spiffytech in my experience:

1.- Yes I use it, mostly for intranet apps.
2.- Well... difficult question...
3.- It's really easy (if the customer has its own server), if not, you have to look for a good one.
4.- If the customer knows something about programming he says 'wow', if the customer knows about old school system development, I mean, Java, Struts, ASP (not asp.net), or plain PHP, he just says: "NO", and if the customer doesn't know too much about development and he asks you to see the source, He isn't going to believe you that that's the code (because is so clean and cute, and almost all people think about a good system with large code and a nightmare of java frameworks)
5.- Almost every customer doesn't care about what you use, they care about having a good solution in a short time.

So in general I recommend you to use web2py for freelance or not for freelance jobs. It's a nice framework, in fact a beautiful one.

[Anthony]

See http://www.experts4solutions.com/.

[Kenneth Lundström]

The first project I was in was supposed to be done in Drupal (PHP). Guy
in charge of the project changed to web2py for some reason unknown to
me. I think the change was good, but it was a little bit hard to tell
the customer about the change without asking first.

After that I havn�t discussed the framework with customers, so far no
one has been intrested in the it.

Kenneth

[howesc]

i do all my work as freelance work, and have done 98% of it in web2py in the last 2-3 years.  it works like a champ, and is really easy to quickly build well-written code that i can easily support 2 years later.  i can't say that for other frameworks i have worked on.  also because web2py is open source when it's not working right i can read the source and figure out what i did wrong (or occasionally report a bug)

the "i've never heard of web2py" or, "noone uses python" statements are hard to deal with - generally gets into religious like battles.  the most successful approach i have to this is i respond like "have you ever used gmail or google docs?"  and then i inform them that most of google's stuff (at least initially) is python.

good luck!

christian

[Miguel Lopes]

1. web2py is especially good for freelancers and single developers because it is such a tight package. Everything works really well together and right out of the box.

2. From the forum I get the impression that there is a lot of intranet work. But if you look for sites built with web2py I think that are enough examples out there to make anyone feel comfortable.

3. It fares really well! One frequently voiced concern is performance, which is not a problem at all. Python is pretty fast for an interpreted language, the database io (outside of Python is really the bottleneck). And rocket is very, very fast.

4. Well, depending on your goals, webdevelopment can be pretty difficult. Especially for a single developer, browser inconsistencies, many different skills and know-hows involved (HTML, CSS, deployment, ...). Particularly powerful and easy is SQLFORM :-) ,  the DAL is pretty sleek. web2py, like Python, can be said to "fit the brain" (i.e. you won't be looking much at documentation) which is a real productivity booster - KUDOS Massimo. The forum is great and answers are generally very very fast.  

5. Generally clients don't care. However this might not always be the case. Python as been around for 20 years! If you look at programming indexes it is generally found among the top used languages:

* http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
* http://langpop.com/
* http://www.devtopics.com/most-popular-programming-languages/

Those who feel more comfortable with corporation languages should check that open-source languages are not subject to corporate whims, so contrary to popular belief they tend to die less. Most importantly, Python is also on multiple platforms, like dotNet and Java, so it is being used as a scripting langugage not only in C/C++ (and others) but also in C# and Java. And a cursory inquiry on who uses it leads to replies like:

* Google - also hired GvR
* NASA
* Disney
* Civilization IV (Firaxis Games)
* Plone (most likely the best CMS around opensource or not)
* Yahoo Maps

The list goes on and on. For some of this and other references :
* http://www.python.org/about/success/
* http://wiki.python.org/moin/OrganizationsUsingPython

No one should be concerned with using Python!

HTH,
Miguel

[Anthony]

On Tuesday, July 26, 2011 9:06:13 AM UTC-4, miguel wrote:

2. From the forum I get the impression that there is a lot of intranet work. But if you look for sites built with web2py I think that are enough examples out there to make anyone feel comfortable.

 

See http://www.web2py.com/poweredby.

 

[DJ]

Hi there,

I get this question all the time. End of the day, what matters most to clients is rapid deployment and low cost of software maintenance in addition to nailing their requirements. I have deployed Web2Py in companies and top hospitals across the US, within their corporate IT groups. Be confident of your capabilities and you will be able to sell any solution you want.

Earlier this year, I had posted a note about w2p, which highlights the advantages of this light and efficient platform: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/web2py/xlIjCReudhw/discussion

Good luck with your projects!

-Sebastian

[spiffytech]

What's the complexity of site you guys normally build with web2py? Is
it mostly CRUD stuff, or anything more complicated? Has anyone built a
CMS in web2py?

[howesc]

all of my sites have some form of content management.  they all are specialized enough that i would not call any of them a general CMS.  I actually don't really use CRUD itself too much, i have lots of custom forms.

cfh

[Anthony]

On Sunday, July 31, 2011 8:21:09 AM UTC-4, spiffytech wrote:

What's the complexity of site you guys normally build with web2py? Is
it mostly CRUD stuff, or anything more complicated? Has anyone built a
CMS in web2py?

 

Check out http://web2py.com/poweredby, though keep in mind that many developers use web2py to build applications that are internal to organizations and therefore not publicly available to put on this list.

 

As for CMS, there's Instant Press (http://code.google.com/p/instant-press/), which has now been incorporated into Powerpack 2.0 (http://powerpack.tecnodoc.com.ar/powerpack/default/index). There's also plugin_wiki (http://web2py.com/book/default/chapter/13#plugin_wiki).

 

Anthony

 

[Bruno Rocha]

I frequently use some plugins that I created, and I also created a micro-CMS calles "SimplrCMS" which is very based in radiant cms. But I do not finish it for release yet.

[Massimo Di Pierro]

> As for CMS, there's Instant Press (http://code.google.com/p/instant-press/),
> which has now been incorporated into Powerpack 2.0 (http://powerpack.tecnodoc.com.ar/powerpack/default/index).

It has? I did not know. Is there any of Martin's blogs that talk about
this?

Massimo

[Anthony]

There's this: http://martin.tecnodoc.com.ar/default/post/2011/04/20/13_instant-press-is-dead-long-live-to-instant-press-20

 

And "Instant 2 Press" is listed as one of the plugins within Powerpack 2.0: http://powerpack.tecnodoc.com.ar/powerpack/default/index

 

Anthony

[guruyaya]

I'm not working at the freelance world, so I don't know if my answer
is valid. But I think any answer you get, will be right to the
location they work in. In israel, there will be a big advantage for
someone that knows PHP, over someone that knows python. I know this
because I recently looked for a job, and could hardly find a python
job. Now I got a job that allows me to work with web2py, but I got it
as a PHP developer, and I managed to convince my boss, that it's
better. Now I acctually asked people on my interviews, why PHP, and
the most common answer was "we have wordpress / zend-cart / joomla /
drupal / some other system written in PHP we need extending, and we're
looking for someone that will extend it".
This is acctually the most problematic aspect of web2py. Instant press
is awsome. It still not wordpress. PyForum is great. It still not
vBulletin. GrooverWiki is great. But it's not MediaWiki. The web2py
book application is awsome.... Ummm... I don't have a PHP example. The
web2py book is really one of a kind. Point is, there is one great
advantage to PHP, over any other language: the things people did with
it allready. As much as I love web2py, I could not tell someone to
install kPax, instead of wordpress, to create a small company website.

[Gour-Gadadhara Dasa]

On Tue, 2 Aug 2011 22:49:16 -0700 (PDT)
guruyaya <guru...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Now I acctually asked people on my interviews, why PHP, and
> the most common answer was "we have wordpress / zend-cart / joomla /
> drupal / some other system written in PHP we need extending, and we're
> looking for someone that will extend it".

I'm in a similar boat...using PHP CMS-es (SilverStripe, Concrete5), wanting to
extend it, tweak it, but would prefer Python instead of PHP.

btw, is there some cart/shop app for web2py?

> This is acctually the most problematic aspect of web2py. Instant press
> is awsome. It still not wordpress.

[...]

> Point is, there is one great advantage to PHP, over any other language: the
> things people did with it allready. As much as I love web2py, I could not
> tell someone to install kPax, instead of wordpress, to create a small company
> website.

Now, I'm determined to move my site from PHP to Python and the dilemma is
whether to use Django (for which I found some decent apps like Django-CMS +
Zinnia blog + Django-Shop or Mezzanine CMS/blog + Cartridge shop) or web2Py
which looks very nice, more simple (which I appreciate very much).

Otoh, I'm confused reading that adoption of web2py is increasing, but end-user
apps like kPax seems to ber quite old?

Why is it so?

I'm 'freelancer' in the sense that I need to work on our own (small company)
site, private site, non-profit-org site, as well as some sites of relatives
friends and wonder if there are decent {CMS, blog, ecommerce} apps in web2py
world which can be easily tied together and used for small-medium-sized sites
or web2py is mostly used for intranet apps or some other usages?

Sincerely,
Gour

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