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Comment by mootothemax | Hacker News Reader

I'd really, really, really advise you at least check out a framework :) Spend 10 minutes reading the documentation behind CodeIgniter (http://codeigniter.com/) and you'll see that you can have more time to spend developing, e.g., features, as the framework has taken care of the routine and mundane stuff.

As a note, I would recommend Kohana (http://kohanaframework.org/) over CodeIgniter, but if you're pushed for time, you don't want to deal with a sparsely-documented framework ;)

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I can't speak for other frameworks, but I definitely second on Kohana, it's light and gets out of your way when you need, yet affords a lot of the newer best practices. If anything, documentation for v3 is lacking, but the forums are somewhat active and the php code isn't actually that complex. Application structure and the idea of overlays on top of system files is an interesting concept and pretty useful.

I've worked with Kohana a lot and I really don't like it, besides how skinny it is (oh, and the H in HMVC). Weird thing is the best programmer I know recommended it to me.

Kohana is a little brain-damaged. Good intentions, but it's essentially a PHP5 version of CodeIgniter in most ways that matter. The problem with this is that a PHP5 version of CodeIgniter doesn't leverage the constructs and concepts that make PHP5.3 (which in 2011 is the lowest version of PHP you should be considering) much more pleasant to work with than previous iterations. Kohana, and CI2, are both rather meat-axey frameworks, where the trend is toward elegance.

I'd consider Symfony2 for most applications, or Silex (which is the Symfony2 app kernel, stripped of the majority of the Symfony2 framework) if you like writing the plumbing yourself. Yii is pretty nice, too.

Kohana 3 is not a rewrite of CI. it was written from scratch.

Kohana also has the worst documentation in the world. Seriously. It has very clear comments in its source code, though.

Yes, it's written from scratch--which is why I said "essentially". It's a full rewrite into what is still not very idiomatic PHP5.1, and I can't really recommend using a non-5.3 framework given the improvements in expressivity and flexibility that came with 5.3.

Kohana isn't a CI rewrite since 3.0.0. And yeah, Kohana 3.3 will natively use 5.3 goodies.

I've yet to see any indication that it will use PHP5.3 in an idiomatic way. It still seems like a bolt-on.

(I still wouldn't use it because frankly, I don't think the Kohana developers take security seriously enough, but it'd be a start.)

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