Managing PHP code while going international
While I still had some time to goof around last week, everything changed on monday. We are in the middle of translating and improving tradebit for the german market. The US site is growing nice and steadily and while we work on the pages again, we found various little things, which need some attention after we had our roll-out in german.
Diverting the whole tradebit php code into 2 different sets of “sites” is not really the best approach, but the fastest. The cleaning of the english set will be done after we have moved everything over. A list of little issues, changes, etc. is growing and I think we will have a solid to-do list for major improvements for tradebit.com after we looked at EVERY page of the offer again.
Who on earth coded that? Err, well, right… that was me 
In such projects I would really love to have more knowledge in managing code bases of larger scale. The whole PHP program selection of tradebit covers well over 700 files with a lot of crazy stuff like the Mobipocket DRM management and simliar niche applications. Now I am cleaning up and try to bring the “quick fixes” to an up2date documentation. Just let me tell you this: if you code and do not document… better not touch that program a year later!
Also a problem in creating a core set of functions with the right collection of enhancements is, that Germany and the US are 2 completly different markets. PayPal works the same, but takes different rates and 2 different funding options, just for an example.
So, until the start of the world cup next week: do not expect too much updates here, we need to do some homework first, before merging the new functions back into the english version!
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