Sounds like you 'had the last straw' considering a PHP framework is causing you to get all emotional on a forum! A lot of people actually prefer Yii over CodeIgniter and other frameworks nowadays for web app development and you'll find that the extensive community and documentation will get people started relatively easily. In the end it's all open-source, so let people try it out for themselves (rather than post your opinion and stating it as if it's factual)!
there's no such thing as a best framework, its quite objective, im sure everyone will have their own version of the best framework/method, it is whatever works for you, there are a plethora of options. For me, probably the easiest to adapt to/start with, is codeigniter, if you know basic oop, you're good to go in minutes.
I went round that bend a decade ago. Given that 99% of the time a website has 'issues' doing anything or is painfully slow some dumbass framework -- and I'm NOT just talking PHP -- was involved... Given that most things people do with frameworks would be less code (and therin less work) without the dumbass framework; I'm not framework friendly. Be it JS, CSS/HTML, PHP -- when it comes to 'viable for web deployment' I have yet to have ANY framework be anything but a waste of time, effort and resources. Admittedly, my bread and butter before I retired was cleaning up other people's messes... so broken bloated methodology is one of the biggest annoyances; and when it comes to websites, "frameworks" top the list of garbage that at best is a sleazy shortcut, and at worst is a bloated train wreck that makes more work, not less. In PHP, they are the equivalent of Frontpage when it comes to making HTML. This is PARTICULARLY true of shoe-horning MVC, a method that should only apply to event driven languages, into a top-down linear executing one... While I like the idea of separation, I disagree with where MVC draws the line in a linear procedural/oop language that has three simple phases: input, processing, output. IPO! Ah yes, the "god forbid anyone have an opinion and state it" reaction. Status quo for the mike-foxtrot /WIN/ -- NOT!
I'm cool with opinions! But it's always good for readers who have less knowledge on the subject to be able to develop their own opinions. A simple "This is ____" versus "In my opinion/I think this is____" can make a huge difference to some readers. It also helps your post(s) seem more credible and less biased which in turn will allow people to take your opinion more seriously!
Drupal is a CMS, not a framework though (and the last version is based on Symfony2, which IS a framework).
You are obviously not familiar with Drupal. Latest version Drupal 8 is not yet ready so latest is Drupal 7. Drupal is a framework, you can use Drupal to build a cms, but it's not useable as cms by itself. The simplest example for a dumbuser is that Drupal doesn't include WYSIWYG by default.
https://drupal.org/ > title of page: Drupal - Open source CMS. So what ? Drupal.org are wrong about the terminology their own product should use ? ahah. Ok, i'll be nice and dig a little further: Drupal is not a CMS, ok. It's a CMF (content management framework). But it's definitely not a PHP framework in the way of Symfony, laravel, yii, code igniter, and all the others. I'm sorry if you feel bad about it, maybe you're a pro at drupal and want to be able you say you master a framework, but it's not. Don't get me wrong though, that doesn't mean you're not a good developer, and you maybe a better developer that one who uses Symfony for example. But if you go saying Drupal is a PHP framework, you can tell the same about Wordpress or Joomla, obviously.
Wordpress, Joomla are CMSes. They are hierarchical and come with edior etc. I can't argue with CMF. But it is a framework with UI. It's not content managment system, that you just set up and then can build websites out of the box. It's something different! If you compare it to Symfony, CodeIgniter etc. Then yes, it's a bit bigger and comes with UI. So in a sense it's more than a simple framework, I understand that. http://www.google.ee/search?q=why+drupal+is+not+cms
First of all Smarty is a template engine. But if you wanna start with a mvc php framework, depends on your php skill, i would recommend to start with codeigniter.
Hello, I have always and will most likely, always use PAI. PAI has always been opensource and free, but has been used primarily by the developer and some of his colleague in the circles around him. I have been lucky enough to know about PAI since i started out with PHP. Tho, i have tried endless of different frameworks out there and i have always ended up going back to PAI. Why? While PAI does what most other framework does, then it cannot be beaten in simplicity, logic and the insane quick load time my websites get. It's short for PHP Ajax Include and does exactly what it says. It uses Ajax to dynamically change ONLY the page content on click and creates an amazing load time and saves server resources. Code PHP like you usually do, forms, analytics, javascript etc. Write as you else would, PAI handles the rest. https://github.com/paiscript Check it out!
@cLogik, in case if you're one of the developers, contributors or friends of PAI (you sound like one at least), the repos could definitely use a README file, to give some explanation or at least an overview of how the scripts works, what it does or how it can help a developer's workflow.
Hello, Your absolutely right, i simply know the developer. And the documentation is being made these days if i'm not mistaken.