I have to write my content management system again - twice

For many years, there hasn't really been a great deal available in the PHP CMS world that I've liked the look of.  OK, I didn't look that hard to begin with back in 2000, but since PHP5 came on the scene, it's seemingly taken ages for anyone to write a decent framework in native PHP5.

All of a sudden, though, it seems that companies are asking for Zend Framework and Symfony, besides the older CakePHP and CodeIgniter that were PHP4-compatible-with-PHP5. 

The first time I looked at Zend, I wasn't that impressed - the online docs were rubbish, and it was complex enough for that to put a lot of users off.  So what's changed?  Well, I've put together a small app - just simple CRUD stuff - and while there are still a few issues with the docs (like the lack of a decent, up to date tutorial), the code itself seems quite mature now.  Clearly others feel this way too, because suddenly, most PHP roles seem to require it!

As for Symfony, I've not yet looked at it, but from all accounts, it requires a lot less setup than Zend.  Hopefully, unlike Zend, it won't rely on .htaccess file mods or the ability to modify the ini file include path, since these are obstacles to adoption from the wider (con-commercial) PHP community who almost exclusively use virtual hosting and often don't have the option to change these things.  One thing that strikes me about it straight away is that it's very straightforward, is well suited to test-driven development, and has a very good, and freely available book.

So, I've got to rewrite my CMS again - for the 4th (and 5th) time now.  Thankfully, the frameworks look like they'll be able to take the bulk of the code writing out of my hands, and I'll be able to concentrate on specific, isolated functionality like authoring and versioning content.


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