What is the difference between a PHP framework and a CMS? It just unclear to me what the difference is.
Thanks!
CMS = Content Management System.
Framework = Collection of tools, source code, methodology and idioms.
You can build a CMS with a PHP Framework, but you can't build a PHP Framework with a CMS.
Also, a CMS doesn't have to be built in PHP, but a PHP framework will be (most often).
A framework helps you create applications by providing solutions for common tasks, but a cms is an application. You can use a framework to create a cms.
There are also a few cms'es claimin to also be frameworks (or have framework capabilities):
Modx
Drupal
If you haved worked with one of the typical frameworks (CodeIgniter, CakePhp, and others), there are for sure quite different to work with a cms like Modx or Drupal, but they are flexible cms'es that are fearily easy to extend with new features!
A Framework is something designed to help programmers build applications, and possibly CMSes.
examples are CakePHP, CodeIgniter, and Kohana.
a CMS can be used by someone with no real programming expierience. examples are WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal.
A content management system is used to manage content. The content can be differentiated according to types, like custom post types for WordPress. You can create a CMS using a framework or code from scratch.
A framework can be thought of as collection of packages to speed up development (compared to coding from scratch).
Now, you mentioned that you want to make your own framework. You can create a framework from scratch, or use open source means, like Composer or Symfony components, to build your framework. Just remember that as a developer, you are responsible for making sure that any open source components you include in your system has been reviewed for security. You can do line-by-line review, which can be difficult (e.g. 5,000+ files on a lumen installation), or any other means based on established protocols of your organization or laws.
Related
I have experience with Joomla and have modified and wrote some simple Joomla extensions. I don't have experience using one of the popular PHP frameworks (such as CakePHP), but I was thinking about using the Joomla framework because I'm familiar with Joomla. How would I use the Joomla framework for a software project instead of using regular Joomla and writing the extensions needed for it to extend it's capabilities? Thanks!
The basic idea is that you:
Get a copy of either the whole framework or just the packages you need+dependencies (from github or composer) or use the older copy that is shipped with the CMS,
Bootstrap your application (JApplicationWeb or JApplicationCli).
Write your code using the MVC structure provided.
The big difference with writing a totally independent application is that you are doing just that, you need to build everything in the application whereas in the CMS there are already a lot of things in place. (The good part of that is that you can make new code with no legacy concerns.) For example, if you look at the JIssues project you'll see that they had to think about things like authentication. So as you would expect writing a simple application is simple, writing a complex one is complex.
You can see many examples of framework applications around, ranging from the ones found in the CLI folder of your CMS installation to JIssues, and of course the three web applications in the CMS are all examples of applications on the framework.
The Joomla Framework is intended (among other things) to be the platform upon which you can build a web-application. The framework is like the frame of one of those motorcycles they build on "American Choppers." It provides the backdrop so that you can hit the ground thinking about your app without worrying about User Authentication, database connection, and a thousand other things like those that get in the way of bringing your app to its potential audience.
If you're trying to extend Joomla, the current edition is what you should be using.
I am currently working with Zend Framework and I am extremely happy with it. What I want to know is at what kind of requirements it is better to use CMS's like Joomla or Drupal.
Considering my current project it is a portal application. It is completely made from scratch in Zend. Then some fellow comes and comment that it rather implemented in drupal you could get plugins for the stuff you built by hard efforts.
So I need a guideline for how to choose between CMS and A Framework at the kickoff phase?
The question in your case is whether to use a ready made CMS or to create your own system using a framework. The right answer depends on the following:
budget
number of users you will have (long term performance concerns)
further maintenance
total number of details (bells and whistles) you want to provide on the site
implementation with third party/custom APIs
special/custom features that require high level of freedom (example: StackOverflow reward points and badgets)
As this is a question most of us face pretty often, here are cons and pros of a ready made CMS vs a framework:
Ready made CMS
Pros
faster start and development time if your project generally fits in what the CMS provides
available modules and themes
backed up by community, meaning that new features, bugfixes, support, tutorials etc. will be provided to you free of charge
unified set of standards - it's easier to continue working on an existing CMS site than to take someone else's custom application (this is relative, but the point is that in a site that uses an existing CMS most of the things/setup will be familiar to you while in a custom app the previous developer had more freedom)
security is something you do not need to worry that much as in a custom app
Cons
if your requirements are very specific, you will need to override the default workflow of the system; in some cases this can be tricky and will make you spend more time than to write your own
redundant code in modules/plugins
performance - a ready made CMS will rarely be as fast as a custom made application
not suitable for every large website (unless you fit in almost everything that the CMS provides)
steep learning curve in some cases (Typo3, Drupal)
Custom application
Pros
it's up to you to define the structure and the logic of the application
app design is made especially for the project you are working on - so there is no redundant code
freedom to do anything you want
Cons
expensive - in most cases you/your client will need much more money for a custom app
further maintenance will be harder
changes and modifications of the structure can be very time consuming
if you aren't using a CMF you will have to reinvent the wheel in some aspects
Bottom line
Spend a couple of days and learn something about the CMSs out there, such as:
Drupal - my first recommendation; good for medium to big websites; good community; medium/steep learning curve
WordPress - my second recommendation; good for small to medium sites
Typo3 - enterprise level system; pretty complex, combined with a framework which can be used standalone in projects
Joomla - I personally don't like it and do not recommend it because of amateur plugins, but it is popular
SilverStripe
MODX
Concrete5
I think that any bigger and serious project, which will have at least 1-2 programmers to take care of the system at all times, should be custom. Exceptions are only if it fits exactly in what an existing CMS offers already.
Hope this helps :)
Take a look at Difference between a CMS and a web-development-framework on StackExchange.com.
A CMS (Content Magagement System) is used to manage content on a website. It usually provides tools to make this task as easy as possible.
Examples of CMSes: Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke etc.
A framework is like a set of libraries / classes to build a web application. Many frameworks provide libraries for database access, templating engines etc. This way, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
A CMS is often build upon a Framework.
Examples of frameworks: CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Kohana...
#Voles mentioned what CMS and Framework is
So your question is "guideline for how to choose between CMS and A Framework "
Want to build a Blog or a simple website ?
Go for Wordpress , Drupal etc.
Want to build next facebook or stackoverflow or app of your own which the current cms is hard for you to learn or is limited with the features?
Then go for some frameworks or custom made ones. Be sure that you know how to build it in the right way.
You can have a look into http://cmf.symfony.com/ also.
Hope that makes clear.
Apart from all pros and cons of CMS and Framework , According to me you need to study your requirement at the time of kickoff. List out the modules you want in your application. Now check that how many modules are available in CMS you know about like drupal , joomla , wordpress etc. and also check out that how much customization you need in this available modules as well as custom modules you may need to develop as per your requirement . And if you found out that with minimum customization you can use any particular CMS and than go for it.
But in case your application may very complex in nature than I suggest go for any MVC framework like Zend , Cakephp , codeigniter etc.
Yes one other thing go with any CMS or Framework that you well versed with it.
Framework is like a library by using this library we can develop new thing.
Whether CMS as name imply its an inbuilt source to manage the content.
Like wordpress we don't need to develop anything.
Framework are the creator of CMS , CMS is basically a Content Management System which focuses on content managing where everything is perfectly setup for you with few lines of code and logics ur website or small app can be developed
Whereas in framework its deeper than CMS everything you have to write from scratch or use existing library which is generally used for making big app. Hope this would help
As far as I know, CMSs and MVCs are web application frameworks with coding libraries. CMS is way easier to use for beginners, as it has its pre-made functionalities available, so you will not need complex coding. I found useful information in Wiredelta's article, maybe this will help for you as well: https://blog.wiredelta.com/cms-mvc-framework-comparison/
Difference
CMS: A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).
Framework: A web framework (WF) or web application framework (WAF) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of web applications including web services, web resources, and web APIs.
A Framework offers a basic web application structure with a set of tools, to let you build your own web application, or even a CMS.
How to choose between them?
I have been working for many years with different open source CMSs (Much with CMS Made Simple, Prestashop. A bit with Drupal, Wordpress) and frameworks (Much with Symfony, a bit with Zend Framework).
My conclusion is:
If your requirements can be fulfilled with features of an open source CMS, and there are only a few custom requirements, use that CMS
If your requirements are complex and/or more custom, use a framework
Problems when using an open source CMS
Plugins often don’t provide all features you need
Community plugins
Have limited features. If you want to extend the features, you end up copying or modifying plugins, making them harder to update
May not be compatible with other plugins or even with the CMS version you have
Harder to debug since it's not the clean code of your team
May not be fully for free and come with additional costs
You spend a lot of time on searching and evaluating plugins
Own plugins
Limited CMS features (eg. missing dependency injection) may lead to unstructured coding
When your plugin gets more big and complex, you may start to ask yourself, why not having used a framework from the beginning
High learning curve, depending on the documentation, technologies used, and how many architectural rules you have to follow
Highly dependent on community
You may not get a fast answer or solution from the community
You may have to debug deep into hardly-to-read plugin or CMS code
Own fixes make updates difficult
Usability
Admins may get overwhelmed about default features, and may generate more support tasks for the developer, where a simple content editor for the admin would suffice
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.
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 !
For the past time I have been working on a Zend Framework based webshop application that we are building from scratch. The application has been successfully been set up for several clients, but we are stumbling upon more and more problems regarding extensibility and modularity of the application.
A lot of clients require a lot of different approaches on some matters, often requiring customizing default modules or extending them. I have been looking on the web for Zend Framework based code that could guide me to this and so far Magento has been the only example I have come up with. Although Magento seems to do a very good job offering extensibility and modularity, the code is far too complex and extensive for my current needs (or so it seems).
In an ideal situation, it would work as follows:
Each client gets the "base" application installed
Modules, controllers, models should be easily overridden or extended
New modules should be easily created
Are there any other Zend Framework based applications or other pointers that could guide me in the right direction?
Thanks in advance.
I think version 1.8 of the Zend Framework is going to address a lot of the issues with building modular applications. Especially with the new (Zend_Application) it should allow for auto loading of module resources, which isn't easy to do at this point.
I don't know much about it, but this may be something to look into. 1.8 should be out by the end of this month.
Zend Framework is a... framework. What you're looking for is a full blown system. That's your job as a developer is to build a system on top of a framework (whether Zend or your own).
People usually tell you not to reinvent the wheel, but in this case you need to develop your own system for your company to easily be able to develop and deploy for new clients.
Like already stated, it is a very complex answer you are looking for. You will not get that answer.