There's no doubt about it - geeks love lists! Jason at 37signals decided to address one of the most common questions he gets by posting the answer on Signal vs Noise. The question? What do you guys use for <insert tool>?
The list will be of great interest to anyone involved in web development. It covers everything from text editor and payment gateway to web hosting and accounting. The one question that isn't addressed is which database is used on the backend. I'm still hoping to get an answer to that one.
Reading through the list reminded me of a similar post I did in June: Tools of the Trade. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a few of those items have changed in the past six months. Here are the updates.
Chats: We ended up building a slick, simple chat solution because our needs were so specific. We were really looking for a moderated Q&A tool more than a true chat room.
Forums: We haven't had a need to implement a forum yet, but now I would be more inclined to use PunBB over phpBB, though both are more than adequate.
Photo Albums: I thought SimpleViewer was cool, but, oh my, SlideShowPro is a dream come true.
Everything else is exactly the same. What are your favorite tools?
Web authoring: DreamWeaver 8
Site Hosting: LunarPages
Forums: phpbb
Blogging: Blogger/TypePad
CSS Books: Eric Meyer's Definitive Guide to CSS, Rachel Andrew's CSS Anthology
Surveys: phpSurveyor
Online reference: SitePoint
Posted by: Rick | January 04, 2006 at 01:00 AM
They use MySQL but I can't find any related entry on 37signals' blog. However, they promote MySQL with Ruby on Rails and David use CocoaMysql in the screencast on rubyonrails.org.
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/archives/search?q=mysql
Happy New Year!
Posted by: Luc | January 04, 2006 at 01:02 PM
Very interesting! Thanks for posting. I read the list and I think they made excellent decisions on all list items except their payment gateway. I was shocked to see Authorize.net is their pick. Card Service International's "LinkPoint" gateway is absolutely superb. And CyberSouce is also a Grade AA gateway. My experience (in multiple scenarios) with the Authorize.net makes me think that if I was stuck on an island, all by myself, and the only payment gateway available was Authorize.net.... I'd close up shop and move on to spear fishing as a career and accept coconut shells as payment. Coconut shells are surely more robust than Authorize.net.
Posted by: Matt Murph | January 04, 2006 at 02:32 PM
Do you think all these new payment processors will build trust.
Posted by: Raths | May 19, 2006 at 04:21 PM