Peter Schmalfeldt

Nginx is my current go-to. If you are looking for a decent server stack recommendation, I tend to use Ubuntu and configure Nginx with SSL and HTTP2. For SSL certs, I use Certbox ( previously called Lets Encrypt ) since it is free and automates automagically.

Node is by far the most useful tool in my stack. I've used it to make custom CLI tools, full-blown APIs, Continuous Integration tools, and even native desktop apps using Electron. I honestly tell people just starting out in this space to learn Node as you can use it for pretty much anything.

While Media Temple is more expensive than DigitalOcean, sometimes it is like comparing apples and oranges. DigitalOcean provides what is called Virtual Private Servers ( VPS ). While you seem to be on your own dedicated server, you are, in fact, sharing the same hardware with others.

If you need to be on your own dedicated server, or have other hardware requirements, you do not really have as many options with DigitalOcean. But with Media Temple, the skies the limit ( but so is potentially the cost ).

My main issue with Media Temple was its cost and ease of scalability. DigitalOcean is a no brainer there. The only downside is that if you want a dedicated private server, you can't do that with Digital Ocean.

I do a lot of Open Government Data, which works with Geo-Spatial Data. GeoJSON is an excellent solution, as it can be readily used by pretty much everything. You can import it as spatial data into most modern databases. You can use JS libraries like Turf.js to run spatial queries. Heck, you can even save a file with a .geojson extension, and GitHub will render a real working map when previewing the file.

I do a LOT or prototyping in vanilla PHP, but once a project starts to take shape, I begin to look at whether Laravel is a good fit. One of the main things I have to consider here is who is on my team or contributing externally.

I have a background with PHP that goes back nearly 20 years, so I have a fair number of teammates that are familiar with the language and have years of experience with Laravel. This makes it an obvious choice for a framework.

I honestly think the best choice for which framework you use should come down to your team's skills. If you have one Senior Dev that is great at React, but like 3-4 mid-level devs, and a handful of junior devs that know Vue.js ... maybe look at using Vue.js a little more seriously.

Yes, there are pros and cons to framework decisions, but I honestly see a LOT of teams not even consider whether a specific framework is a good fit.

I honestly think the best choice for which framework you use should come down to your team's skills. If you have one Senior Dev that is great at React, but like 3-4 mid-level devs, and a handful of junior devs that know Angular ... maybe look at using Angular a little more seriously.

Yes, there are pros and cons to framework decisions, but I honestly see a LOT of teams not even consider whether a specific framework is a good fit.

If you are using a project that has a HUGE amount of animations ( used tastefully, of course ), then this library makes a lot of sense over writing your own CSS. However, if you are only using one or two animations, it might make sense to just port those over, or if you are using Sass, just importing the ones you need.

PHP vs. Laravel is kind of the same debate I have with seeing people throwing in entire frameworks to create a single page site. I tend to use pure PHP when working on a new project with some rather unique requirements ( usually SEO, pulling in CSV files, large cache needs, etc.).

Usually, my projects do not stay in raw PHP for very long. Once they start to take shape, and we have a better idea of the project's requirements, it starts to make sense to port the larger projects over into a framework.

Starting with a framework can often force decisions you might not have made if framework requirements were not guiding you.