Part of my job in exploring the technology and techniques used in newspaper Web sites involves visiting quite a few sites, as well as talking to the producers and engineers behind those sites.

One thing I realized quickly is that there is virtually no standardized way of doing things in this business, with the exception of hosted sites where a single platform and templates are used liberally (see related story, page 38). In many aspects of life, this isn’t the case. When you sit down in almost any vehicle, you can expect that an internal combustion engine powers it, usually with a piston count between four and 12.

There are exceptions to the rule: for example, the hybrid designs of the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius that also use electric motors, but they are the smallest percentage when compared to the standard. Explore five newspaper Web sites and you’re likely to find 15 different scripting and programming languages each contained within an equal variety of content management systems.

When choosing the technology to develop a new feature or product, the manager of the overall team will no doubt hear a variety of opinions as to what core language and technique should drive it. Sometimes the manager will have intimate experience with a broad spectrum of choices and sometimes they will largely be putting their trust in the expertise of others. There are several guidelines, however, that might help someone faced with such a choice:

• What kind of traffic do you expect on this new application? This will determine how much you can get away with in terms of scripting vs. more hardened solutions such as writing a .com component or running it as a .cgi script. Be realistic. You might wish your new display ad application will be doing one-tenth the traffic of eBay within six months, but is it likely? For a couple thousands of runs a day on a fast server, most script applications are going to be robust enough if the pedestrian aspects like error-handling are solidly debugged. But don’t let this keep your programmer from writing a C++ application if they think they can turn it around quickly and they’re enthused about the idea. But overbuilding for the sake of vanity is a waste of resources.

• What does your team prefer? Programmers are perhaps the most catholic (in the traditional sense of the word) professionals out there. If you like a good time, put a bunch of PHP guys or gals in with a group of .NET developers at a cocktail party, and throw out something like “Hey, how about Apache being hacked? I guess it’s no more secure than the IIS now!” If your team knows only .asp programming, you can bet that’s what will be used on every application you request, whether it’s appropriate or not. Having wide language experience on a team is an expensive luxury, and one that few can afford. The best way to fight that as a manager is to be as well-read as you can be on at least the basics of programming languages, so you can be aware of the differences between scripted languages and compiled ones, and how databases are accessed. Of course, investing in training to keep your team as flexible as you can afford is money well spent.

• What happens if your team leaves? Well, hopefully not the whole team, but if your application is developed in some obscure language from Lithuania that your key programmer loved because he instant messages with a guy named Radavan all day long, and he happens to step in front of a bus, well we know how that’s going to work out. On the other hand, if it’s written in VBScript and well-commented throughout, you’ve immediately got thousands of other programmers who are more than likely going to be able to make sense out of your application and not only keep it running, but make changes and improvements you need. It was striking when I talked to various newspapers about their internal content management systems, how often when I asked who developed it, the answer was “Well, the guy who wrote it doesn’t work here anymore ...” That’s always good to plan for, as much as you may not want to.

Next month we’ll take a look at the basics behind the most common programming and scripting languages that are widely used by newspapers in their Web operations, and what job each is best suited for.

Hays Goodman is the Webmaster for Newspapers & Technology and GMToday, a Milwaukee-area portal. He has been involved in professional Internet development for four years, and welcomes your comments, feedback and suggestions for future Tips & Tricks columns. Write to him at webmaster@conleynet.com and include your contact information.