Topic: Help Choosing a PHP Framework

[netplay]

Hi There,

Wish you guys could help me with a little question I had.

I am developing a web application in PHP. I am searching for an open source, simple and light framework, that would have common modules like login, user registration and management, menus management etc to use as a base to build my application. Could anyone help me out with some suggestions.

Thanks and Regards,
Alec

[Liquid Fire]

what you are looking for a CMS not a framework.  A quick google search of PHP CMS should return you quite a few results.

[SomeFunkyDude]

I, like you, am searching for a viable framework as well. Most if not all frameworks are OOP (object oriented programming). ZEND is probably the best since its actually supported by the creators of PHP, but there are other frameworks like Codeignitor that promise speed and ease of use. CakePHP also seems to be pretty popular.

I'm sure you can find benefit in using these frameworks, but expect to spend a weekend or two just learning them. I spent a long time trying to learn Codeignitor, and covered a lot of the basics, but still have a ways to go.

All in all, yes, you can get extra premade functions built into a framework, but that means you have to not only learn how to install and use the framework, but how to modify and add to the functions if they don't do exactly what you want them to. Ask yourself if it's easier to just make the functions yourself, or if its worth learning an entire framework just to use theirs.

[FetyrDeqy]

its cms dude 

[glenelkins]

Textpattern is not a bad CMS...quite easy to use

CodeIgniter is an awsome framework

[Toppy]

Of the PHP frameworks I know, the simple and light one's I would recommend looking at would be:

CodeIgniter - http://www.codeigniter.com
Solar - http://www.solarphp.net
Kohana - http://www.kohanaphp.com

CodeIgniter, I would say, has the biggest following.  You will find several 3rd party plugins/addons that would help with what you require.  There are several acl/auth packages (that include login, user reg, etc) to choose from, I believe there has been some posts on breadcrumbs as well.  There are also a few larger apps that help with back end or even the complete site.  I would also venture to say you won't find a more helpful community and better documentation.  The major drawback is CI is done with PHP 4 compatibility so it doesn't take full advantage of PHP 5's uprgaded OO.

Solar has similarities to Zend Framework but is more light weight.  It is done with PHP 5 and actually the developer of it had worked on Zend Framework as well (Solar is older than ZF).  I find it fairly straight forward with the major drawbacks being the release schedule and the community isn't as booming as CodeIgniter.

Kohana started as a fork of CodeIgniter but ended up rewriting from scratch with PHP 5.  There are some similarities with CodeIgniter and it remains quick and not overly complex.  Their community is picking up steam and they're continually improving the framework.  Kohana is the youngest of the three and still has some growing pains they're going through (more changes than others).  The community and docs are good.