PHP Framework Question! Zend, CakePHP, Symfony, CodeIgniter. Finally I get to ask something.
-
Hey ya'll! We are looking to re-build our backoffice website. It's a dynamically generated site that pulls information from a DB. The DB is populated by the quote form. The DB contains the customers' info, shipping, email templates, and everything to process orders. The backoffice website is custom made in JAVA, but the owner is not happy with the programmer. I told the owner we may want to go to a PHP Framework.
My question is which PHP framework would you recommend and why?
Zend
CakePHP
Symfony
CodeIgniter
-
Hey Highland. Thanks for taking the time to answer. I use Magento all the time. I remember how slow it was in 2008 when I 1st started using it.
I value your comment "The key to our simplicity is copious documentation (inside and outside the code)." I think this is the main problem we had run into before and my fear is that the current programmer is the only one who understands his own work. We trust the guy with all the information, but he's so slow at getting things done that I sometimes want to get him some assistance. But that new person may have to decipher everything.
I have taken some courses in PHP, but I don't code because I'm the one bringing in all the money to the company via internet. I don't have the time to code, although I would love to do it myself.
"Life is too short for Java." LOL
-
I attended a PHP conference a couple of years ago, where Rasmus Lerdorf (the guy who created PHP originally) decried all frameworks as explicative (and this conference had CakeDC, a major Cake PHP dev house, as a sponsor). While I don't fully agree with the sentiment (frameworks aren't completely worthless), you also have to understand that you're adding an intermediate layer to your codebase having one. Sometimes it simplifies things, sometimes it makes them more complex.
Zend Framework 1, for instance, was notoriously slow (a fact even the guy at Zend, who wrote most of it, agreed with). Magento built their early platform on this and it dragged horribly. I was also unimpressed with how well ZF code flowed. While it did MVC well, it was like having to relearn how to code (and I had been doing PHP for over 3 years at this point). I understood why they were doing things that way but they abstracted everything to the point where I couldn't keep track of my program flow anymore (it's bad when your stack trace, the list of everything that lead up to an error, is 50 lines long). I have not tried ZF2 but I have heard it is significantly faster (it uses namespaces and auto-includes instead of a million default includes). Still, I don't think it's easier or better.
What we do is we write our own backend and use Smarty for the frontend. It takes a little longer up front but it's written using standard objects and we have much better control. The key to our simplicity is copious documentation (inside and outside the code). Someone coming into our company would only need to know PHP to work in it, as opposed to knowing PHP + something else. Remember, someone will have to maintain this stuff for you and you don't want to pigeon-hole yourself into some framework few people know.
As an aside, they were selling T-Shirts at this conference that said "Life is too short for Java." I do agree 100% with that statement. It's a good move to ditch Java for PHP.
-
Hey Jack, thanks for that link and your answer. I was already looking into CodeIgniter. One of the coders I use prefers CodeIgniter.
The system is going to have people's SSN, Passport information, and things like that. So I have to be careful who I select to do the project.
Also, I see you're new to SEOmoz. Welcome!
-
Yeah very good point!
I was just wondering because I'm still in the learning stage of PHP I can see how quickly the code can get out of control!
I think SEOmoz use CakePHP when I was nosing at their jobs page. A lot of people reccommend CodeIgniter on StackExchange as well, so I might check that out.
I better start learning to use one of these then. Can I ask you to let me know which one you go for please?
-
I don't see why we shouldn't. The last program we had was in PHP. It worked, but the code could only be understood by the developer. It was so customized and there were patches everywhere to make things work. When I wanted somethings done, these tasks were too hard too implement or were going to take too long.
I want to use a framework to be able to scale our backoffice. I am bringing in more qualified traffic to the company every month and they will need to hire more people. I personally don't want the company to hire more people. I want them to invest in a system that can make their process more efficient and save the money by not hiring people.
-
Do you think it's essential to use a Framework when building a system like this?
-
I think the answer would depend mostly upon the individual who will actually be doing the actual programming and their comfort level with a particular framework. While each of these PHP Frameworks will get the job done, the question is how efficiently will it execute the job of getting information to the screen. Here's a bit more to look at : http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Framework+Comparison+-++CakePHP+vs.+Zend+Framework+(ZF)+vs.+CodeIgniter
My personal preference is CodeIgniter - it tends to be a lighter weight framework that allows you to create cleaner more efficient pages that load more quickly than some other frameworks. CodeIgniter allows you to add particular Zend libraries to it to add functionality when needed.
To keep page load times fast, most skilled programmers in any of these frameworks can remove unused functions and includes on a page to make it execute just as clean as CodeIgniter. I think it's truly a case of what your best available coder is comfortable using.
Mike Monahan
JM Field Marketing
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is this is Wow HIT ME IN THE Face Google bug or am I missing something?
We have a page on our site https://www.spurshelving.co.uk/shop/bigimage.aspx?m=353&i=3436 which enders happily on all browsers as far as I am aware and is reasonably well optimised. So when google sent me a link to a new test tool I just had to check it out. https://testmysite.withgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/?utm_source=awareness&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tmsv1awareness&utm_content=header Well the result was shocking...... The page that renders in the results is a default missing product page and not the page that the link renders on a web page. I played a little and simply used the I=3436 attribute and the page appeared no problem I then reversed the attributes so that they were i=3436&m=353 and the page again resolved totally as expected. This indicates to me that Google have an issue with aspx attributes. Now I know what to do but is this same issue an issue in spidering and indexing pages. If is is wow that is a big smack in the face. Does it also harm search results in other engines. Keen for comments here
Web Design | | Eff-Commerce0 -
Q&A DB Script For Client Questions
Our clients usually have a lot of questions about our industry. We implemented Facebook comments (see bottom of: http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/info/faq.htm) on many pages throughout the site to allow our clients to ask whatever they'd like and build additional content using copy on how our clients speak, not industry expert vocab... I have some problems with FB comments: Our answers only show to people logged into FB. For others it looks as if we don't reply. The data pulls from FB, so we don't own it and it is slower than our server. You need a Facebook, Yahoo, or Hotmail account...I want anyone to be able to ask a question. Can anyone recommend a script that accomplishes our Q&A functionality using our own database? Also, I'd like to allow anyone to post without a requirement of an account. If I had a WordPress site, I suppose this would be easier, as I'm sure there are various comment solutions, but I have a HTML\PHP based custom built site.
Web Design | | TheDude0 -
Schema question
What if an info, like an address, is not visible in my content but I would like Google to know the address through a schema markup like the following sample? Is it ok with Google and their guidelines? , , Here's what Google says from this link https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1093493?hl=en&topic=1724124&ctx=topic though it is quite confusing for me: "In general, Google won't display any content in rich snippets that is not visible to human user. It can be tempting to add all the content relevant for a rich snippet in one place on the page, mark it up, and then hide the entire block of text using techniques like display:none, value-title, css etc. Don't do it! Google will ignore content that isn't visible to human users, so you should mark up the text that visitors will see on your web pages." Is it ok if the content is not visible to users but included in a meta tag? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | esiow20130 -
‘80-90% of SEO already done for you in Wordpress’ Am I missing something?
Hi there, I’m looking for some feedback on a statement made on my Facebook Page re Wordpress and SEO. Please understand I wouldn’t class myself as an expert but I am competent and achieve satisfactory results for clients, more so since becoming a SEOmoz Pro user, I’ve just had some great results for a client using SEOmoz guidelines in ‘On Page SEO Reports’ thank you very much! A comment however made on my FB page has got my interest…. “as you (kn)no(w) google loves WP and will get listed quicker as 80 to 90% of your SEO is already done” Does Wordpress (or Joomla for that matter mentioned in the same conversation) have some SEO advantages that Google loves as the poster would have me believe, can I save time and effort working in word press from an SEO point of view? I use the age old techniques of targeting key phrases and words and distributing them accordingly. Creating internal link structures with ‘key worded anchor text’ etc before embarking on any off page SEO. Do any of you vastly experienced (in comparison to me) SEO folk have any insight into what this statement refers to? I did not gather any references to SEO advantages in Wordpress or Joomla in the Enge and Fishkin et al book The Art of SEO, or any of the other books I’ve read, to develop my knowledge on SEO for the benefit of my clients and of course my pocket. J
Web Design | | JemRobinson0 -
Duplicate home page /index.asp /index.php etc
We recently moved www.devoted2vntage.co.uk to shopify but seem to have multiple home page variants still in google index. I am concerned that these will be causing duplicate content. I have redirected the offending URLs below to www.devoted2vintage.co.uk/ and have set up a canonical URL but need an expect to tell me if I have taken the current steps and if not, exactly what I need to do. www.devoted2vintage.co.uk/index.php www.devoted2vintage.co.uk/index.htm www.devoted2vintage.co.uk/index.html www.devoted2vintage.co.uk/index.shtml www.devoted2vintage.co.uk/index.aspx www.devoted2vintage.co.uk/index.cfm www.devoted2vintage.co.uk/index.pl www.devoted2vintage.co.uk/index.asp
Web Design | | devoted2vintage0 -
How not to get penalized by having a Single Page Interface (SPI) ?
Guys, I run a real estate website where my clients pay me to advertise their properties. The thing is, from the beginning, I had this idea about a user interface that would remain entirely on the same page. On my site the user can filter the properties on the left panel, and the listings (4 properties at each time) are refreshed on the right side, where there is pagination. So when the user clicks on one property ad, the ad is loaded by ajax below the search panel in the same page .. there's a "back up" button that the user clicks to go back to the search panel and click on another property. People are loving our implementation and the user experience, so I simply can't let go of this UI "inovation" just for SEO, because it really is something that makes us stand out from our competitors. My question, then, is: how not to get penalized in SEO by having this Single Page Interface, because in the eyes of Google users might not be browsing my site deep enough ?
Web Design | | pqdbr0 -
SEO ethical practice in question
A family friend asked me to take a look at her website. www.designsbymaida.com First thing i noticed is what seemed a 301 redirect or a forward to http://funktionaldesignstudios.com/dbm-old/ So her site is hosted with what it looks like, in his site(funktonaldesigns). What does this means in terms of how google sees her site and in terms of SEO. My thought is that he is boosting his domain name. He is getting the link juice. Thanks for the insight and help.
Web Design | | QualityHosting1 -
Do iFrames embedded in a page get crawled?
Do iFrames embedded in a page get crawled? I have an iFrame which prints a page hosted by another company embedded in my page. Their links don't include rel=nofollow attributes, so I don't want Google to see them. Do spiders crawl the content in iFrames, or do I have to ensure that the links on this page include the nofollow attribute?
Web Design | | deuce1s0