I love PHP, but the logo is ghastly. It looks like it was designed by a programmer humanoid Unit, not by an actual designer species of human being. We’ve got to do something—and fast! It’s time for PHP to get a fresher, prettier, cuter face.

Ruby’s has the super sexy Rails thing going for it, and Python has that heart-warming snake. Admittedly, Python’s charm is hamstrung by the stale Monty Python references—who even knows what “Spam! Spam! And more Spam!” means these days? There’s no doubt that Ruby and Python are as wonderful as all the other Turing complete languages, but one day we’ll wake up and admit that they were merely the Flavors of the Month and that PHP is the Flavor of the Decade.

And how is PHP fighting off this onslaught of pretenders to the throne? Sad to say, with a stodgy ellipse and some off balance lower-case letters the reek of Gimp and 1996! We’re gonna have to step up to the plate if we want to compete in the sexy, pretty face contest.

Then again, PHP’s logo, ugly as it is, suits PHP’s personality. Just look at PHP’s syntax; it’s bloated and verbose, no better than Java and C++. Syntax-wise, the Ruby and Python gangs are killing us. Have you seen what Ruby and Python code looks like? They’ve got the looks, the sweet syntax, and no damned semi-colons. They’re frackin’ sexy, sleek, modern languages.

We can rightly claim that PHP is functional as all Hell, so does it really matter that it’s butt ugly? If you’re ugly enough, you’re beautiful, they say in the world of haute couture. We’re pretty ugly, so maybe we can look claim that all those parentheses, brackets, braces and semi-colons are really beauty marks. Or maybe PHP is the Charles Bronson of programming languages—so ugly it’s handsome.

Then again, maybe PHP is just the winner of the Ugly Language Contest.

Does beauty matter in a programming language? Is it important to be sexy? Sleek? Concise? It may not matter to you, but it matters to me. I’ve always preferred to look a pretty face, and a sleek figure, with no damn semi-colons in my code.

You can call me shallow, but call me human, too. I’m just like all those new Code Kiddies coming to join our party. I know they’re going to look at those pretty languages, then look at fugly PHP, and make a choice. I’m afraid a lot of them will be like the shallow side of me—they’re going to want to date the Head Cheerleader, not the Lunch Lady.

Wait! Don’t despair—yet. I think we can do something to save our PHP. If we’re not going to change PHP’s syntax, the least we can do to is create a hotter, sexier logo. I propose that we have a contest, a Design a Better PHP Logo Contest. It may be just one man’s dream, but a cool logo can make up for being homely, boring, and functional.

Since I’m starting the contest, I get to make the rules. The first rule is this: No programmers can enter this contest. We want artsy-fartsy types only!

To get the ball rolling, here are my entries.

That’s my best shot. Let’s see yours.

Gosh. Did I sensationalize that headline a little? Hey, I’m just trying to get a little attention around here.

My real point is that I have a lot of respect for David Heinemeier Hannson. In case you don’t know, he’s the genius behind Ruby on Rails. In my PHP work, I borrow|steal|swipe|pilfer|consume|embrace as many of the brilliant concepts in Ruby on Rails as possible. I’m grateful to Rails for elevating our Collective Consciousness.

One of the things I really like about Hannson is that he’s both opinionated and above the fray (you know what I mean by the fray—those bone-crunching flame wars between the ROR/Java/Python/.NET/PHP fundamentalists). Check out his recent open-minded post for an informed take on PHP.

You gotta like where this guy is coming from.

When I got the urge to create this site, I assumed that I would do it in Rails. I’ve been building Rails site for a few years and I love it for my CCSF and CSM web sites.

So I made a frill-free list of the features I wanted: CMS, blog, shopping cart, and checkout. Whoa, there partner! This is getting to be a lot of work, even using All Mighty Rails. I know myself, and I know that I would be fiddling with this humble set of features for months. Damn, I wanted to be in production mode in two months, not still slogging through the initial phase, like Monsieur Grand in Camus’ The Plague. (You’ll get used to my literary references. Before my current incarnation as a PHP/Ruby/Perl programmer and teacher, I was a practitioner of Comparative Literature.)

When I added in “research time” to beef up my knowledge of blog protocols, I began to sense that I was about to start a one-man Death March into the Heart of Darkness. So I swallowed my pride and consulted a wise friend who snickered at my unsophisticated plan. “You want to do this by yourself in two months, and write the content, too?! You’re stark raving mad, as usual. You gotta go with a pre-made solution.”

I looked around and immediately rejected Django (as another evanescent distraction), Moveable Type (the wrong language—Perl), Joomla (too grand for my simple plan), Drupal (a baroque behemoth, grander than Joomla by dint of the kitchen sinks tossed in here and there), and cakePHP (I don’t want to live in CakeLand and play by Cake rules).

So I settled on Wordpress, a PHP-based solution that I could tweak painlessly. The plus is that I’m really not interested in how Wordpress works, so I can view it as utility, like a refrigerator running in the corner. Who gives a flying rat’s ass about refrigerators? No one. You just use it to keep your food cold.

So, there is it: a bland, boring, utilitarian solution that just get the job done, kind of like PHP itself. Just what I’m looking for.

Long live Wordpress. Long live PHP.

Welcome to mojoPHP.com. As you can see, we’re pretty much at Stage 0. To keep things interesting, I’m going to document the evolution of this site. Let’s get started.

In the beginning…

Today I took a BrainStorming Walk to Bayhill (there’s a Peets over there) and I sketched out what I want mojoPHP to look like. I’ll confess right up front that I’m pretty much borrowing the good parts of other sites I like, so don’t be be surprised if you get a sense of déjà vu as the site develops.

By the way, these guys are my neighbors…

To start with, here’s what came out of my BS Walk.

This is going to be pretty hot stuff, guys.

Keep hacking…

–Doug Putnam