With all the technical considerations of designing and shipping PHP-based software, it's easy to forget how every line of code you write can have a direct impact on your customers. Almost any code has the potential to shape the user experience and result in repeat custom or an over-subscribed helpdesk. Allow Drew McLellan to take you through the lessons learned when building Perch - a PHP content management system that banks heavily on providing a great user experience. Hear what has worked, what failed miserably, and how a goal of eliminating all support requests has driven the technical design of the product.

1. -THE ORIGINAL-
HYPERTEXT
PREPROCESSOR
Drew McLellan
edgeofmyseat.com
grabaperch.com
PHP Community Conference
22nd April 2011

2. EVERY LINE OF CODE
-CAN HAVE A-
DIRECT IMPACT
ON USERS

3. DESIGNING
SOFTWARE
- FOR -
HUMANS

4. FUNCTIONALITY
-IS NOT -
ENOUGH

5. REWIND

6. DUDE!
LIKE WHAT ABOUT
DRUPAL?

7. “With Wordpress (don’t
even get me started on
Drupal), the learning curve
was very high, requiring my
clients to learn about posts
versus pages versus
custom post types.”

8. D O Z E N S O F
OPTIONS
MILLIONS OF
USERS

9. THERE'S ROOM
- IF YOU CAN BE -
DIFFERENT

10. L I G H T W E I G H T
PHP CMS
FOR SMALL WEBSITES

11. LISTEN UP!
CLASS
IN SESSION

12. - THE MOST -
DIFFICULT
PROBLEMS
- ARE THE -
WET ONES

13. Support will
kick your ass.
Jason Fried, 37signals
http://www.extractable.com/blog/?p=58

14. Helpspot really saved
our ass when it came
to support.
Todd Dominey, SlideShowPro
http://5by5.tv/bigwebshow/24

15. SUPPORT
INVOLVES
- A LOT OF -
ASSES

16. MANY
CUSTOMERS
ARE
INEXPERIENCED

17. THEY NEED
A LOT OF
SUPPORT

18. EACH LICENSE SOLD
30 MINUTES
OF SUPPORT TIME

19. - FIND WAYS TO -
REDUCE
SUPPORT
REQUESTS

20. EVERY REQUEST SHOULD BE
UNIQUE

21. SUPPORT
YOUR
OWN
S OFT W A R E

22. - WHEN -
WILL THIS
FAIL?

27. ALL CODE BREAKS.
GREAT CODE
BREAKS WELL

28. NOT ALL
ATTEMPTS
ARE SUCCESSFUL

30. SPEED
OF RESPONSE
IS THE MOST
IMPORTANT
T H I N G

31. TECHNICAL
PROBLEMS
- ARE -
DIFFICULT
TOO

32. PHP5
AS STANDARD

33. WE WOULD
LOVE
- TO M OVE T O -
PHP5.3

34. THE FAILED
PROMISE OF
SQLITE

35. SCHEMALESS
STRUCTURED DATA

36. !<perch:content
!!!type=”text”
!!!id=”heading”
!!!label=”Main heading”
!!!required=”true” />

37. <h2><perch:content id="heading"
type="text" label="Heading"
required="true" title="true" /></h2>
<p class="date"><perch:content id="date"
type="date" label="Date" format="%d %B
%Y" /></p>
<perch:content id="body" type="textarea"
label="Body" textile="true"
editor="markitup" required="true" />

38. TABLE OF
KEY-VALUE PAIRS
- OR -
BIG BLOB OF
JSON

39. TABLE OF
KEY-VALUE PAIRS

40. SCALES UP
WELL
CAN BE
FILTERED WITH
SQL

41. - REQUIRES -
HOUSEKEEPING
INEFFICIENT
FOR SMALL VALUES

42. BIG BLOB OF
JSON

43. STORE
ANY SHAPE DATA
IN ONE ROW
EXTREMELY
SIMPLE

44. CONTENT HAS TO BE
FILTERED IN PHP
NATIVE JSON LIBRARIES
ARE NOT YET
UNIVERSAL

45. CREATE TABLE `perch_contentItems` (
`contentID` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`contentKey` varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`contentPage` varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '*',
`contentHTML` longtext NOT NULL,
`contentNew` tinyint(1) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '1',
`contentTemplate` varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT '',
`contentMultiple` tinyint(1) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`contentAddToTop` tinyint(1) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`contentJSON` mediumtext NOT NULL,
`contentHistory` mediumtext NOT NULL,
`contentOptions` text NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`contentID`),
KEY `idx_key` (`contentKey`),
KEY `idx_page` (`contentPage`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=1 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

46. SO, UM, HOW'S
THAT
WORKING OUT
FOR YOU?

47. NON-NATIVE JSON
IS SLOW

48. QUERYING ACROSS
TABLE COLUMNS
- AND -
JSON -VALUES
IS A -
TWO STEP PROCESS

49. SO WHAT IS
GOOD
ABOUT IT?

50. {
! “heading”: “Foo”,
! “date”: “2011-04-22 10:00:00”
}

51. [
! {
! ! “heading”: “Foo”,
! ! “date”: “2011-04-22 10:00:00”
! },
! {
! ! “heading”: “Foo”,
! ! “date”: “2011-04-22 10:00:00”
! }
]

52. [
! {
! ! “_rev”: 1300447544,
! ! “_content”: {
! ! ! “heading”: “Bar”,
! ! ! “date”: “2011-04-22 10:00:00”
! ! }
! },
! {
! ! “_rev”: 1293968747,
! ! “_content”: {
! ! ! “heading”: “Foo”,
! ! ! “date”: “2011-04-22 10:00:00”
! ! }
! }
]

53. SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE
HISTORY STACK

54. THEORISING IS EASY
NOTHING BEATS
EXPERIENCE

55. RUNNING PHP
EVERYWHERE
IS HARD

56. WE'RE USED TO
CONTROLLED
PLATFORMS

57. ALL BETS
ARE OFF

58. - CHEAP -
HOSTING
IS CHEAP

59. WINDOWS
IS WEIRD

60. MIGRATING
BETWEEN
FILESYSTEMS

61. - NEVER -
MIX CASE
IN MYSQL TABLE NAMES

62. - BE -
OPINIONATED
- BUT NOT -
DICTATORIAL

63. WYSIWYG
- IS -
EVIL

65. But my clients
must have an
editor like Word!

66. IT'S NOT OUR PLACE
TO TELL PEOPLE
HOW TO WORK

68. EDIT IN PLACE
- IS A -
FALSE
PROMISE

69. HELP CUSTOMERS
SERVE
THEIR
CLIENTS

70. IDENTIFY YOUR
CUSTOMERS'
PROBLEMS

71. CONFIDENCE
- IS -
EVERYTHING

72. EVERY FIELD
- CAN BE -
ANNOTATED

73. help=”Use the
teacher’s
initials from
the timetable.”

75. <perch:help>
!<p>Confused? Watch
!!!this video:</p>
!<video>...</video>
</perch:help>

78. DRAFTS
PREVIEW
UNDO

79. - BE A -
MAGICIAN
NOT JUST
A DEVELOPER

80. FUNCTIONALITY
-IS NOT -
ENOUGH

81. LEARN TO
ACCEPT
WHEN USERS ARE
HAVING
TROUBLE

82. REALLY GREAT
DEVELOPERS
SOLVE PROBLEMS

83. YOU CAN'T
WIN
EVERY USER

84. I love the little cms but the one thing I was
expecting to get is a license for multiple domain,...
if you guys can help with that you will earn a big
customer,.. and as of right now I already found 2
more cms just like yours at a lower price but what
they take a away is in the interface design,..
(which I could careless about it) but you guys still
my number 1 option but if you guys can give me a
break on that little part for licensing multiple
domains that will be very much appreciated,..

85. - NOT -
EVERYONE
WILL GET IT

86. THANK YOU!
Perch is at grabaperch.com
Slides: http://lanyrd.com/2011/phpcomcon
On most things, I’ am @drewm

87. QUESTIONS?