Survey results could be inaccurate

PHP is very easy language to learn, and use for live projects as well. Many web applications are provided to easily host PHP websites, for example cPanel and other such control panels. Most of the hosting providers are providing PHP, Python, Perl and Ruby support; and I think PHP is the easiest to learn and use among these. Also, these hosting providers provide these features at very low cost compared to other web server technologies like NodeJS, Java and .NET.

As PHP is easy to learn and use, there is possibility that less number of developers less often would require StackOverflow and therefore the StackOverflow's surveys could be inaccurate as they are mostly based on the search for solutions on the site. Frameworks like Laravel, Yii, CakePHP; CMS like WordPress, Magento, Joomla and other ready-to-use web applications are also easy and have their own extensive documentations and online wide communities resulting in lesser visits to StackOverflow. PHP is not much used for too complex tasks (like hardware, graphics, sound processing etc.) and this too decline visits to StackOverflow.

Hello Nikunj,

Thank you for your comment.

You are correct that PHP is easy to learn.

PHP is a language that evolved to address better the needs of Web and mobile developers.

Since PHP is free software, many hosting companies support PHP to host customers' sites with low budgets.

As for StackOverflow, I tried it in the past, but they have too many participation restrictions. For instance, I could not suggest using packages in the PHP Classes.

So I do not use it anymore. It seems to be more for people wanting everything for free inside StackOverflow. It is their rule. I respect that, so I left that site. Therefore StackOverflow has a focus that is not for everybody.

Here in the PHP Classes, we allow packages imported from GitHub because we want to collaborate with as many developers as possible that want to advertise their work.

Since PHP is more for the Web server side, it is expected that it is not used to deal with client-side devices like hardware, graphics, sound processing, etc.. as you mentioned. That is more the role of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.

I have read complaints similar to yours about StackOverflow. I am not sure but the problem seems that people are not supposed to provide direct links to their own sites when answering questions on StackOverflow. So, when you want to answer a question in StackOverflow, you may write like this "Solution to your problem is XYZ package", and then you may add like "It is available on PHPClasses.org site". Do not provide any link in your answer, or just avoid your site's name altogether.

They may have problem with the model of PHPClasses.org also, because it requires that the developer must be logged in to download any package from this site. What if you remove this restriction?

Anyways, you are doing great job, many developers are learning from this website, please keep going.

Hello Nikunj,

From what I understand, many sites like StackOverflow have rules to keep the site's users inside the side to engage with their community. Therefore they do not allow users to promote resources of the authors that post answers to promote content on other sites.

We do not have an objection against that rule. We have that rule in the package recommendation section to help site contributors get more users.

As for the requirement to be a registered user to access the code of packages, that is not a restriction. It is an option for each author that shares packages on this site. Each author may disable or enable that option.

If an author keeps the requirement to be a registered user, the site can keep track of the actual users interested in each author's package code. Still, users may evaluate package code examples in most cases without logging in.

If the author keeps the requirement to log in to access the class code, this site can email users who have accessed the package code in the past. We can also show the number of actual users who accessed the package code so the author sees the real number of interest in his package.

Anyway, it would be more useful if we knew why those users that object to registering so we can improve the site for those users. Do you have any idea?