I was looking for a fresh forum software (threaded) or bulletin board (flat/partitioned). And I'm wondering if there's an implementation based on one of the big PHP frameworks (CodeIgniter, Kohana, Yii, CakePHP, ZF, Seagull, Fusebox, Symfony, eZ, Prado, or whatever...).
Reason: A framework based implementation would be inherently more secure, because of ORM and validation and abstracted processing logic. And also would be good showcase of the framework itself.
Tutorials and example implementations of e.g. blogs are frequent for each PHP framework. But I didn't find much in the area of forums/boards. There was only a single implementation "sfSimpleForumPlugin" for Symfony, in alpha stage and seemingly abandoned, too bare-bones for practical use anyway.
However I'm surely not looking for a feature-bloated forum script. Just the common functionality, and ;) an excellent sample application for the particular PHP framework.
It's surprisingly hard to google. Is there something? Framework homepages not helpful. (And they all use phpBB or something.)
The new version 2 release of Vanilla Forums has just been recoded from scratch as an application that runs on a new PHP MVC framework called Garden. While most have probably not heard of Garden, I think the fact that it powers such a popular forum package ("382,287 sites use Vanilla Forums") stands as somewhat of a testament. If you view Vanilla's application code on GitHub, you can see that the folder structure looks similar to what you would find in other MVC frameworks. Although there doesn't seem to be an official website for the framework yet, the author has released a series of blog posts that give some insight into why the framework was developed and what features it contains.
There are many:
CupCake forum on CakePHP
Web3CMS on Yii
Also interesting for you: Comparison of Internet forum software (PHP)
Related
I am interested in learning Zend Framework 2.x, and I've noted that there are many good books written about ZF 1.8, 1.9, etc... however, I haven't come across any that explicitly states it is for ZF2 (except for one, and it was written in German).
In order to learn ZF, I could sit an learn it through the documentation... however, that sounds rather unsavory, despite the fact that it contains the latest information and arguably is the "best" source. I would like to endeavor in the more abundant sources on versions 1.8 or 1.9 as I learn this framework.
How much overlap is there between 1.8/1.9 to 2.x? I know 2.x uses namespaces and many new PHP 5.3.x features, but are there really that many changes between the implementation of these versions that I would be wasting my time trying to learn anything less than 2.0?
I'm aware that even if there is a large amount of compatibility, I would still have to come back and fill in a few "knowledge gaps". I'm just looking for a quick run down of the framework overall.
Thank you for your time.
Zend Framework 2 is very different from ZF1. It's core has been rewritten and the MVC structure has changed quite a bit.
The blog post announcing ZF2 goes into some detail on what has changed and why so I would recommend reading that. If you haven't used ZF1 extensively, you won't know some of the components they are talking about but that's okay. But as it states, ZF2 will look alien to those familiar with ZF1. Part of this is the new MVC structure and there are many new core components not available before including the ModuleManager, ServiceManager, and EventManager which provide better ways of accomplishing tasks that were more abstract to accomplish in ZF1.
Unless you plan on working with ZF1 projects, there isn't much sense in learning it at this point; I'd jump right into learning ZF2 at this point. If you were to learn ZF2 now and come across a ZF1 application down the road, there will be things you run into you aren't familiar with but largely you should be able to understand what's going on and get in and edit the application and learn what you need to know as you go.
Since the libraries provided by ZF1 and ZF2 are able to be used standalone, it would be possible to use some ZF2 classes in ZF1 as long as those classes aren't too tightly coupled to other classes in ZF2. For example, you can use Zend\Crypt from ZF2 standalone quite easily, but trying to use Zend\Form might be a different story since its tied to views, validators, filters and other classes.
As for learning ZF2, like you said there aren't many books around yet since its so new, but there are a lot of resources available for learning it aside from the reference guide.
I'd recommend looking at Getting Started with ZF2, the ZF2 Skeleton App, as well as the Zend Webinars where you can already find some great ZF2 tutorials including a presentation called Getting Started with ZF2 presented by The Zend Framework project lead Matthew Weier O'Phinney. There's also an upcoming webinar about MVC that's worth registering for (its free).
Hope that answers your question!
I'm embarking on a very big exercise to build a CMS in php. It's actually my attempt to learn PHP in a fun (and hardcore) way coming from a Java background. Java is all object oriented so oop is in my blood, but I'm finding that OOP hasn't made it yet to PHP. Most PHP is still being written today the old way without the new concepts.
I'm trying to find an example PHP CMS that's written as object oriented. I hear Xoops is. Any others you know of? or any OOP libraries in general that you know of that could help me in a CMS project.
I would suggest symfony framework as it is well documented and functional framework that helped building many web applications.
http://www.symfony-project.org/
PHP5 is pretty OOP. Look for CMSes and frameworks that only work on PHP5. For example, Kohana
Concrete5 is a pretty complex OOP based CMS. Might be a harsh start but I've learned a lot by working with it.
again, +1 for symfony, but this is a large project and getting to know symfony will consume most of your time, yet if you want to dive in, its documentation is really great.
since you are trying to build your own CMS, get started with easy to grasp frameworks and build upon them. Don't waste your time on everything that has been already done. I recommend you Codeigniter MVC Framework http://codeigniter.com and for CMS, PyroCMS http://pyrocms.com which is built upon codeigniter is cool. Codeigniter is really easy to get along, and documentation is very neat and clean.
Further, if you like to start with a simple php framework, here's what Tyrehall has done, http://github.com/tylerhall/simple-php-framework . This project can act as a base for your CMS
No one seems to have mentioned Kohana the PHP 5 only framework.
Kohana has a pretty active and very helpful community to back it up (#kohana on freenode in particular).
edit: Upon closer inspection I see someone has already mentioned Kohana.
what you will notice is that what is more important to most cms (and framework) developers is MVC pattern implementation. Most MVC implementations in php do in fact use oop practices (some stricter than others)
+1 for symfony, and another I'd like to recommend is Kohana (built on CodeIgniter)
Also have a look at their forums, as both already have a cms or 10 built using these frameworks.
Using these frameworks brings you about 60% there, as a lot of the rudimentary tasks are taken care of.
edit
also remebered this one: fatfree framework it's quite lightweight: http://fatfree.sourceforge.net/
Have a look at Phundament 3.
Phundament 3 is an application foundation built upon a set if independent Yii modules and extensions such as user, rights, yiiext, gtc, ckeditor, jquery-file-upload, p3widgets and p3media.
The combination of p3widgets and p3media provides basic content management system (CMS) features, like dynamic widget creation and file management.
Combined in ckeditor, p3media acts as a ckfinder plugin which gives you the full power of HTML and media files for content creation via p3widgets.
It comes with a very minimalistic setup which integrates perfectly into an Yii web application skeletion and installs with one single command.
as some folks suggested here, you should start with Codeigniter because it's really easy to dive in. Its documentation is very well structured and easy to read. But I think Codeigniter seems to be very old now.
What I really recommend to you is Laravel. There's another Framework you should look into, that's FuelPHP. But for me, Laravel has absolutely changed to way I'm writing my PHP code. It is the best framework I've ever seen in my life. It's so elegant that you will instantly fall in love with.
If Laravel suits you, I recommend you to follow this online course by Jeffrey Way # Tutsplus.com. You will love it!
Good luck :)
Have you seen CakePHP?
http://cakephp.org/
Its a MVC framework for PHP. Its pretty robust and can be used in a fully object oriented manner.
We currently use MySource Matrix CMS for large projects, Wordpress CMS for small projects and Zend Framework for bespoke applications...
I'm not trying to confuse and compare a CMS to a framework, that has been done before :-)
I want to identify a few CMSs for review that have foundations in strong (preferably independent) PHP frameworks.
The only one I have looked at is SilverStripe CMS and Sapphire Framework.
We have many clients that have a CMS for internet and/ or extranet and then various other bespoke applications that are then integrated via various means to look like they're in the CMS.
I believe it will be more productive and beneficial to have a common framework between these branches so they can be natively merged.
Hope this makes sense.
PS. I have used custom assets in MySource Matrix and specific modules in other CMS but you feel you are working for the CMS not the application you are building.
Have you looked at Expression Engine? Its built on top of the CodeIgniter MVC framework, and may provide a lot of flexibility for having parts of the site be managed content, and branching out into more application type stuff using CI when needed. Not free, but all my colleagues that use it, swear by it (so much so that I'll actually consider it for the next project that fits this profile). There are also add-ons for many of the commons problems you're likely to want to solve.
And while not PHP, the Django framework is also a nice cross between CMS and App Framework, with some really great features like DB Migrations, etc. I can honestly say that Learning Python made me a better PHP Programmer, and the projects I've done with django were fun and fast to code. Not to start a holy war, but I describe Django as Drupal without all the clutter (and yes I've worked with Drupal enough to respect and fear it at the same time ~ too much friction in the Drupal dev process for my taste).
Even if I didn't get clearly what you are looking for I was just searching for a CMS that is not bundled with a propietary PHP framework and it should also be fast, simple coded, ordered and flexible to extend.
After a lot of search I found OctoberCMS. It uses Laravel PHP framework and it's intended for wevdevelopers/programmers, may be in a future it will also support more WYSIWYG edition. Right now it's very fast and easy to extend via MVC implementations or plugins.
It has a nice code and structure to work as programmer. If you like to create content via HTML+CSS and you don't care about WYSIWYG, then this could be a great alternative.
It's a very different approach compared to other CMS bundles. I'm not saying it's better, just different.
With their slogans:
The PHP framework for web artisans
http://laravel.com
The platform that gets back to basics
https://octobercms.com
Have you tried Drupal? We have used it as a CMS and also integrated it with things like Microsoft Dynamics and UPS Worldship. It's pretty flexible like that.
I wouldn't call sapphire and independent framework for the simple fact you'll have a hard time finding many apps written in sapphire alone - sapphire pretty much is silverstripe. Theres also the issues of silverstripe using an ajax powered admin interface for much of its own functionality meaning you have to adhere to these to keep the same look and feel with the bespoke work you want to add.
There are several questions about PHP frameworks, but I'm curious as to which one(s) are used in the commercial world when developing web applications with PHP. At my first web-based job, they didn't have a framework for the PHP codebase. Is this common when dealing with PHP? If not, what frameworks to companies producing a product (either a site that provides a service of some kind or a web-based product that can be purchased) using PHP tend to use?
Is this common when dealing with PHP?
In my experience, unfortunately it is. This is of course a gross generalization, but people who tend to learn PHP as their first programming language don't learn the essentials of maintainable software development and often don't really know how to write good code. I think this is a failing of the PHP community, where historically most learning resources don't emphasize good practices (probably because the authors didn't know any better!). You can of course write good code with PHP, as long as you understand underlying programming principles.
Companies will often start out with a hap-hazzard code base of PHP scripts that get re-used and gradually extended from project to project (often without source control!). The companies that know what they're doing and take it seriously will evolve this into some kind of in-house framework, or I have often found they'll move onto something without the historical crapness of PHP, like Django or Ruby on Rails.
If you're just starting out, there are several decent MVC frameworks that will form a good base for all your developers to learn and use. In no particular order:
CakePHP
CodeIgniter
Zend Framework
There are of course others as well.
That said, as always it depends on the project. Sometimes a framework either won't make sense or will be overkill, othertimes you're better off using a pre-built product (like a CMS) and building extensions to it.
Most frameworks are strongly focused on the presentation layer. Now, "corporate" is of course a rather vague term, but I assume you mean for more typical IT tasks, such as accounting, CRM etc. For these tasks, the presentation layer is a much smaller part of the entire application. Not only does this make said frameworks less important - it actually disqualifies them somewhat, since you don't want the restrictions on your model layer, that they impose.
I think it gets more and more common to use a framework. A few years back most programmers developed their own framework. But the cost to train a new employee for such a framework gets higher and higher. Therefore many companies are moving now to well known frameworks.
I guess that Zend is currently the most used Framework in the corporate environment. One reason is that it does not give you any restrictions on the model layer.
I can not predict the future but I guess that Flow3 will be used in the future too. It is the new Framework behind Typo3. And many Typo3 developers (web designers) who need to write web applications will probably use Flow3 then.
In last two three places I've worked the company had their own (private, built in-house) framework.
According to a PHP Framework Popularity at Work survey by Sitepoint in 2015 (7554 survey participants) the five most used frameworks are
Laravel (22%)
Symfony2 (14%)
Nette (9%)
CodeIgniter (8%)
Yii 2 (7%)
Furthermore survey results indicate, that
5% use a company internal framework,
3% use no framework at all,
3% use a CMS for everything,
1% use a simple MVC framework.
There seem to be continent specific framework preferences: In America and Asia, Laravel seems to be the framework of choice (except for Russia: Yii 2), whereas in Europe you'll find more Symfony2.
(Be aware that this is just referenced from one source -- see links above.)
The only enterprise-level framework I can think is Zend Framework. CakePHP, Code Igniter and others are only focused on RAD development.
Having experience with CI , yiiframework and calephp (not much, really) my opinion is that CI is not flexible as ohter 2, so I do not recommend it on larger-scale projects.
Anyone who disagree, just can try a demo project with cakephp and Yii and he will see how things are easier with them as crud,form validation etc.
Of course all have their disadvantages :)
recently i talked with a CTO of a company, offering a e-lecture solution and we talked about PHP for a while ... we both agreed, it is not the best language for rock solid solutions, but he pointed out the symfony framework, they used just before moving to java ...
also, flow3 mentioned by raffael is quite powerful ... most interesting thing to me is, it brings AOP into PHP ...
greetz
back2dos
You may want to look at www.flow3.org, it's a pretty comprehensive approach to PHP application frameworking and is rapidly approaching its first mainstream Beta release.
I'm not sure if PHP has gone into the enterprise market in the US yet but when i worked in a corporate office the language what they use is Microsoft .NET.
PHP is yet to enter the corporate world IMO. It is popular with the hacker world and maybe micro and small software/web companies.
I have to develop a CMS for a friend of mine, nothing commercial...
I'd like to take this opportunity to learn a php framework, to see if it would be suitable for future (and more complex) developments, or at least to steal some nice ideas...
SO I'd like to easily implement a content management system and at the same time have a look at a modern php framework (one of the rails inspired ones, or at least implementing MVC, which I think covers them all...)
I've heard of http://www.digitaluscms.com/, built with zend framework, and http://radiantcms.org/, but that is ruby on rails (I'd prefer php for ease of deployment and hosting...)
If you want a CMS built with a real Framework, I've heard (just today, actually) of Diem, which is built upon symfony (and uses some components of Zend Framework).
Maybe Sympal, also based on symfony, could interest you too.
If you want to learn, and work with symfony, one of those two might be the perfect match for you.
Still, as those two are not as popular as Drupal (or Joomla, or whatever other well-known CMS you can think about), I would probably not use them for any "real" site -- at least, not before studying them for a while.
For a framework, I would recommend Code Igniter wholeheartedly. It's MVC based, super-lightweight and it reminds you of Rails a lot. You can check out a screencast of a hello world application here: http://codeigniter.com/tutorials/
In regards to a CMS that could be http://expressionengine.com/, it's a popular CMS built on top of Code Igniter. I don't really like it as a CMS, but you were asking about a good platform to build on, so that would probably be a great bet.
The most common PHP frameworks are Symfony and CakePHP - I don't know CakePHP so much, but personally Symfony is too big and bloated for my taste, although very powerful.
The most common used CMSes are of course: WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. There are endless other systems available, but most of them don't really have a great platform to build on.
Good luck!
Others have mentioned various pre-built CMS applications. If you want to build your own in an existing PHP framework, check out CakePHP or symfony.
http://cakephp.org/
http://www.symfony-project.org/
But really, you should just learn Django, because it's so awesome.
A free CMS built on CodeIgniter is PyroCMS. The demo is currently down but installer is so freaking simply you could have it running in a few minutes.
Modular, multi-lang, UTF-8 throughought and pretty easy to skin.
Unlike other CMS' I have seen built on frameworks, PyroCMS doesn't touch the core framework at all, which means future upgrades of CodeIgniter will be easy.
you should take a look at silverstripe - besides the fact hat you really should read about what a framework nowadays can deliver, so some basic knowledge about Rails and Django is absolutely essential to put yourself in a position of beeing able to decide yourself what is good for you and what is not.
One most important thing ignored is RESTful-ness - many CMS or Frameworks still not support it or at least do it very complicated. Yuo need to read about REST to understand, why you want a framework or / and CMS that suppirts REST.
Talking about Joomla here is, of course, a joke.
Use Joomla. It probably won't teach you much but you will get a very nice system. Professional level even. Joomla has a MVC framework but most of what you do will be configuration. But really who wants to do a cms any more anyway? So many of them out there.
All kidding aside, Joomla is written in php, scales nicely and has a nice admin interface for the client/end user. It is also used all over the place.
If you really want to learn a usable framework try to write the cms in zend or codeigniter. those are beautiful frameworks.
If you really want to experiment a popular PHP framework while developing a simple CMS, look for a real CMF.
The only one I know at this time is Symfony2 CMF. It's a set of Symfony bundles providing popular CMS features like the Node concept, blocks, menus, dynamic routing (for routing to newly created nodes), etc.
Using a CMF instead of a CMS prevents you to configure your application only using a big administrative back-end and make you to understand the framework behaviors. As a consequence, you will be able to use the framework (Symfony in my example) even for a non CMS related project !
Using a CMS like Wordpress or Drupal (which is built on top of Symfony) will hide you the framework.
P.S: Actually, Symfony CMF is only compatible with Symfony 2. But beta versions of the bundles are already available for Symfony 3. Anyway, there is a LTS version of Symfony 2 whose bug fixes support ends in 2018 and security support in 2019 !