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
-
Google is a definition engine / Question answering engine
But what do you do to rank when you sell a product and people don't have questions and none of the companies that rank on your keywords answers questions... Let me give you a few example. Title tag for example : People want to know what is it and then have question about it What is the maximum number of characters ? How do you write a good one ? Etc... How to remove stains is another example : Please want to know how to remove all the different types of stains, (ketchup, grease etc..) But what about when you are a online business and want to sell usb keys , rent bicycles https://www.spinlister.com or even sell a software to do A/B testing on your website https://bit.ly/2a6cBuF Can someone explain me how those people mentioned rank without giving definition or answering questions... because according to me they don't do any of that on the pages that I mentioned. I look forward to your reply. Thank you,
Web Design | | seoanalytics0 -
Google tag manager on blocked beta site - will it phone home to Google and cause site to get indexed?
We want to develop a beta site, in a directory with the robots.txt blocking bots. We want to include the Google Tag Manager tags and event layer tracking code on this beta site. My question is that by including the Google Tag Manager code, that phones home to Google, will it cause Google to index this beta site when we don't want it indexed?
Web Design | | CFSSEO0 -
Sitemap Question - Very Old Ecommerce Site, Never Used A Map
I help manage a family website, that has about 10,000 products... It was top ranked since 1996, then got smacked by Penguin and recovered but its still receiving only a fraction of the natural traffic it used to get. Something we have never used... Is a sitemap. I'm curious if anyone knows reliable software that will generate a sitemap? My cart is custom built, website uses html pages across the board. Dynamic content and parameters are set up properly, onsite seo is in the excellent range. The only thing that I haven't been utilizing is a sitemap. Because the cart was hand built, it would a huge convenience to use a lightweight program thats compatible with any website, has parameter settings, exclusions and anything else useful to negate any duplicate content. I have a few highly dynamic pages as well... If anyone knows a product or a possible solution, it would be much appreciated. Working it up myself would be very time consuming. Thx
Web Design | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
How to change the entire contents and design in my site without getting troubles with google?
Hello everyone This is my first post over here. In the next few weeks we going to change the entire content and design in our site. The site has 240 pages with poor contents and design. Except 301 redirects for all the old url’s I wanted to consult with you what is the right way to do it without harm my organic traffic that come from google? How google refers to this kind of changes? Which steps should I need to take to do it properly? Hope to get your help in the issue. Tahnks in advance.
Web Design | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Wordpress Frameworks for SEO - Genesis - Does it Get Any Better?
I'm sure there's a ton of people in this community running Wordpress, any Genesis developers/users out there? For anybody who doesn't know, Genesis is a parent framework for building wordpress child themes. It saves a ton of time for people that aren't too handy w/ php (like me). I'm working on a few sites locally with it right now, and it's really impressive. I'm seriously never planning on using another WP framework. It also integrates perfectly with Yoast SEO, which is something not all frameworks do. So I thought I'd try to get some input from the community here, anybody have another framework they like? Or have an opinion on the SEO benefit of genesis? Would love to hear...
Web Design | | SVmedia0 -
Nav / Sitemap Question. Using a "services" page vs just linking directly to individual service page?
Okay, so our company offers video production, web design, and web marketing services. While we do offer these services individually, our goal is to get our clients to integrate these services together. Our nav is currently like so : home - about - video - web design - web marketing - blog - contact Now I've seen businesses and agencies also use a nav with a "services" button instead of listing out their service offerings (if they have more than 1, like us). The services button usually links to a category page or has a drop down with links to the company's individual services. I'm wondering if there is any benefit to having a main services page like this and linking to the individual pages off of it (video ,web design, marketing, etc). Or if we should just keep it the way we have it now (since we've already got some page authority on the individual service pages). I know this may not be the most important aspect of our site and we may be over-thinking it but any thoughts/ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
TOP 5 Questions I Should Ask a web designer or developer?
I want to redesign my website to work better with SEO and crawls. I need to make sure I hire a good designer/developer but I don't have a ton of money to spend. What are the top 5 questions I should ask a web designer/developer to ensure they are good designers and have successfully implemented SEO??...or at least a site that is crawled well and has some SEO built in.
Web Design | | CapitolShine0 -
Question for a developer out there...
I have a random question form someone who is a developer. I"m not sure if this is the right place to post this question, but figured it was worth a shot. I have the Yoast SEO plug in installed, and it this plug in is duplicating some of the functions of my theme and as a result I have some duplicate html and meta data in my source code. From what I can tell it looks like both my theme and and the YOAST plug in are duplicating meta description, canonical url, and maybe a few other things that I can't really understand. I was wondering if anyone knew of what the best way to fix something like this, and if these issues are having any negative effects on my site / SEO? Thanks so much.
Web Design | | NoahsDad0