Need suggestions on which web frameworks to use?

Question

I want to build a site where people can create their personal websites quickly. All their websites will be hosted on my single web application (i.e. there will be only one database which contains info of all the websites).

Each person will have an account where he can customize his website (template, content etc.). They can access their website from .mysite.com or mysite.com/xyz. I should be able to add different modules frequently, which will immediately reflect in all the websites created through my site.

Based on the above requirements, please suggest me if there are any frameworks to use which can ease my job. Also suggest me which language to use (php or java). Which one would be better.

Answer 1

First of all select what options you gonna give the users to create websites .Keep it simple (Provide very easy interface to write articles and changes theme and sidebars). I would not suggest to use existing CMS's as It will hard to keep a single DB for all then. Use any framework in PHP mine personal favorite is Codeigniter. Dont try to make it feature rich right from start (will make it slow). See google's blogger platform for ease to use example.

Answer 2

One solution:

Start with an existing CMS like Drupal. Use it to create templates that look like what you want to provide, and give people an easy front-end to assemble these templates.

Otherwise you're going to be reinventing many wheels simultaneously.