hi angus... You're probably going to get a lot of different approaches to this one! as a long term/time developer in a past life.. In my humble opinion, a reasonable approach is to start by laying out the key things that the app has to accomplish, and then to break this down into a list/sublist until you get a comprehensive list of things that your app should do... You can put these items into buckets to help keep track of what you've thought about. Each bucket can then be aligned with a given section of your website as you start to get into the UI/Look-feel of the site. One of the most important/key things you can try to do, is to find someone a few people, who are willing to act as a sounding board for the different aspects/parts of your project. Once you've gotten the list, and a basic UI/Wireframe kind of overview (and you can use word/openoffice/etc.. to create a wireframe) you can then have something that you can kind of look at, kick the tires so to speak of what you're envisioning the app to be. This overall process forces you to really think about what the app should consist of, as well well as how it's going to be put together, how the different sections are going to flow... Once you all of the above, you can focus on the workflow/processes of the app. What happens when the user does X, who gets notified, when the user does Y, that kind of thing... There's a lot more, but this should get you started!!! Good luck! -----Original Message----- From: Angus Mann [mailto:angusmann@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, June 01, 2009 9:51 PM To: php-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Web application design considerations - a good reference ? Hi all. I'm working on a PHP project for my own personal business use. It will handle billing and invoices as well as payments and time management, bookings, appointments and a few more. I may add things like personal messaging between the various users and a customer login to check on the progress of their accounts. It is a big project and will probably take a year or so to complete in my spare time. I have made a couple of starts but I have no experience in creating such large applications and I find I often end up with spaghetti code. I've tried using session variables to keep track of where and what the program is doing but there are so many permuations and combinations I found myself writing endless streams of if's, and's and or's just to figure out what page to display. The code is not the probblem for me...it's the flow and organization of the code. Can anybody point me to a good book or tutorial that lays down the principles and gives some suggestions for integrating the many subroutines of a large application? I want to make the code readable and logical in its flow, and avoid repetition of code segments. Much appreciated. Angus -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
