[Maceman]

Not being a techie, I have never heard of PhP.

But I can tell you that FR is by far and away the most user friendly discussion forum I have found anywhere on the Internet.

[sarasota]

I agree with Maceman. Love this format and as for "ever", no thanks.

[I still care]

I love the FR forum. It is superior to any other, very user friendly, etc. Every so often I take a scroll over to DU just to see what is going on (they were busy making fun of the pope yesterday -I guess Reno and Ashcroft were too shattering for them) and wonder how they can stand the inefficient way everything is laid out.

But I will admit I often have difficulty "finding" things. Bookmarks, etc. What do they call that - menus? The menus I find never have the items I am looking for.

[ThePythonicCow]

Php is a bunch of software used to create fancier websites. It is often used with an Apache web server (which FreeRepublic might be using - don't know) and a database backend, such as MySQL. It provides modules that can be used to present a number of fancier looking web page components.

I'd suspect that it would require more webserver compute performance, and a higher bandwidth connection to the internet (the web pages are bigger).

Pretty obviously, being able to handle the load that this site sees, using minimal hardware and bandwidth, and using the classic tools that John Robinson knows so well, makes a lot more sense.

We don't need no stinkin buffed and glossy pages.