After studying PHP for the last six months, i believe i am at a level now to start using a framework and wondered which one is the best?

 

I have heard cake is good but i have also come across some tutorials on codeIgnigter and i don't know which one to choose? Anyone else use one??

 

Any advice on the best php framework to use would be fantastic.

I started using frameworks after about a year of developing normally with PHP.

 

I normally work with the Zend Framework for larger applications, like the one I posted on here the other day. It's very powerful, and scalable and does a lot of things right out the box. There was quite a learning curve to it, and trying to figure out how it all actually works was difficult but paid off in the end.

 

I've also worked with CodeIgniter and CakePHP. I didn't like CakePHP at all, I found it too restrictive in terms of what I could do with it. However, I'm absolutely certain that that's just me coming from the Zend background (otherwise CakePHP would never be so popular).

 

CodeIgniter is written in PHP4, and it feels to me like there's a struggle for it's developers in maintaining legacy support, and updating the framework to utilise the features of PHP5 to make it quicker, easier and more powerful.

There is a PHP5 fork available (though I forgot its name).

 

I gave up on Cake very quickly so don't have a lot to say about that.

 

I just found a draft of an article I was writing on my blog here, which compares CodeIgniter with Zend - it's really rough and not worth posting but having read it I'd say CodeIgniter is easier to get started with and probably the better option for smaller sites, but Zend is the better option for large sites, that need to be scalable.

 

As with all these things it's about personal preference. I like Zend, I'd favour that, and it's probably because I'm familiar with it. However, I did at one point sit down with a clear, unbiased mind which was set on making a site with CodeIgniter, and I still ended up going back to Zend!

I've only ever used cakephp because of a recommendation from a friend. I like using cakephp and it really does speed things up.

 

Unfortunately because its the only one I have used its hard for me to compare it to other ones.

Thanks for your replies. I forgot all about Zend so perhaps i will take a look at that. To be honest though, i ain't that skilled in PHP yet and thought a framework would increase my knowledge faster? What i really want to learn is how to create a custom CMS and build my own shopping cart system.

 

Reason being is that my company are always getting asked for these and they have to outsource because no one in-house can do them. I know modx well but this can be an overkill for some clients wants. I just want to be able to help out more in the development side of things and hopefully the old money will go up^???

I really like CodeIgniter, the docs for it are pretty good too. There's also tonnes of tutorials available.

Personally I would recommend Zend, if for no other reason than it is backed by Zend, new releases are regular - around one per month. It's powerful and customizable and getting quicker all the time. The last benchmarks I saw were slightly worse than Codeignitor but faster than Cake. I'm sure this has changed as it was several versions back.

 

As stated above the docs for codeignitor are probably better than Zend's and it is easier to learn initially but after the learning curve it can save hours of development time. The digitalus CMS amongst others was developed in Zend and also Magento shopping cart was developed in ZF.

 

I'm still learning the framework but I'll be sticking with Zend. Also, if you're looking for a development job in the future it never hurts to have Zend technology on your CV.

Cake, CodeIgniter, Zend and Yii are the best. Personally I use Yii because of its speed, clear documentation and nice extensions like backvendor http://www.yiiframework.com/extension/backvendor/ or bootstrap http://www.yiiframework.com/extension/bootstrap/

Hope that helps!