To set the scene, there are three major PHP based open source frameworks available out there: Symfony <http://www.symfony-project.org/>, Zend<http://framework.zend.com/>and CakePHP <http://cakephp.org/>. All very good frameworks and more or less the norm for building successful social networks, although there are some exceptions to the rule.
I love that symfony is such a complete system. Zend sounds like it would be easier to pick up, but give you less support in the long run. I've not heard anything that would make me abandon the investment I've already made in symfony.
On your blog you said you need root access to install symfony. That's not true. I regularly install it on shared hosting with very limited access. The simplest way is to freeze the project, but you can also set PEAR up locally.
Spot on, Freeze Symfony is definitely a possibility. I will add that as an update on the blog.
On a separate note would be good to mention that Zend is actually harder to code but I feel that is a good thing you get people who are serious about learning MVC.
> I love that symfony is such a complete system. Zend sounds like it > would be easier to pick up, but give you less support in the long run. > I've not heard anything that would make me abandon the investment > I've already made in symfony.
> On your blog you said you need root access to install symfony. That's > not true. I regularly install it on shared hosting with very limited > access. The simplest way is to freeze the project, but you can also > set PEAR up locally.
I don't believe symfony is anything near a one man operation. As an example, Dustin Whittle of Yahoo is responsible for significant portions of the framework (Yahoo have heavily customised symfony internally, and, so far as I understand it, he brings the more globally useful improvements back into the fold).
However, François himself was a rather critical member, and his absence from the project is most heavily felt in the fact that the documentation for Symfony 1.1 is significantly less impressive than for 1.0 (François was mostly responsible for documentation). This has left the transition to 1.1 from 1.0 a fairly painful one compared to the otherwise wonderful experience of using symfony on a day to day basis.
This "lack of direction" has led me to finally try Django (and therefore python) a bit more seriously (deploying my first live django site - http://dordorset.org on it), and I've been impressed in more ways than I haven't (if that makes sense). However, I'm very much of the belief that at this moment in time, symfony is still by quite some distance the best framework for PHP projects of anything greater than "a couple of pages and a small CMS" complexity. I hope that the project finds its way in what appears to be a moderately difficult time for it.
Therefore, if you're thinking of changing framework because you're unsatisfied with symfony, personally, I'd look to change languages, too. However, that's a very large investment of time for a team of people. As a lone freelancer, I'm lucky enough to be able to do side projects that don't have time budgets to meet, and that's where I've been trying out new technologies.
I certainly won't be throwing the baby out with the bathwater and abandoning symfony completely just yet.
> The decision has been taken to STOP using Symfony for future projects. The > reason is well described<http://redotheweb.com/2008/05/16/no-one-is-irreplaceable/>by > one of the active collaborators of Symfony, François Zaninotto. > "Important > design choices are not discussed with the community, just like when symfony > was only developed internally. 95% of the code base is still the result of a > single man's work and decisions". François has now left Symfony, in his own > words as he couldn't get his views accepted. Although Symfony has now been > adopted by Yahoo and is being used by major projects like
Agreed. For us it was a very difficult decision but one we had to take. We still have sites in Symfony which obviously we will continue to support. Heard a lot of good things about Django, maybe worth a try in the near future.
> I don't believe symfony is anything near a one man operation. As an > example, Dustin Whittle of Yahoo is responsible for significant > portions of the framework (Yahoo have heavily customised symfony > internally, and, so far as I understand it, he brings the more > globally useful improvements back into the fold).
> However, François himself was a rather critical member, and his > absence from the project is most heavily felt in the fact that the > documentation for Symfony 1.1 is significantly less impressive than > for 1.0 (François was mostly responsible for documentation). This has > left the transition to 1.1 from 1.0 a fairly painful one compared to > the otherwise wonderful experience of using symfony on a day to day > basis.
> This "lack of direction" has led me to finally try Django (and > therefore python) a bit more seriously (deploying my first live django > site - http://dordorset.org on it), and I've been impressed in more > ways than I haven't (if that makes sense). However, I'm very much of > the belief that at this moment in time, symfony is still by quite some > distance the best framework for PHP projects of anything greater than > "a couple of pages and a small CMS" complexity. I hope that the > project finds its way in what appears to be a moderately difficult > time for it.
> Therefore, if you're thinking of changing framework because you're > unsatisfied with symfony, personally, I'd look to change languages, > too. However, that's a very large investment of time for a team of > people. As a lone freelancer, I'm lucky enough to be able to do side > projects that don't have time budgets to meet, and that's where I've > been trying out new technologies.
> I certainly won't be throwing the baby out with the bathwater and > abandoning symfony completely just yet.
> 2008/8/12 Raj Anand <rajeshwar.an...@gmail.com>: > > The decision has been taken to STOP using Symfony for future projects. > The > > reason is well described< > http://redotheweb.com/2008/05/16/no-one-is-irreplaceable/>by > > one of the active collaborators of Symfony, François Zaninotto. > > "Important > > design choices are not discussed with the community, just like when > symfony > > was only developed internally. 95% of the code base is still the result > of a > > single man's work and decisions". François has now left Symfony, in his > own > > words as he couldn't get his views accepted. Although Symfony has now > been > > adopted by Yahoo and is being used by major projects like > --
--- On Tue, 12/8/08, Raj Anand <rajeshwar.an...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We are just moving form Symfony to Zend after a long long > debate. I was > wondering if anyone else had similar thoughts in the past.
This probably doesn't hold up to much rigorous checking but if you google something like "Zend Documentation" (>1 million) and "Symfony Documentation" or "$yourframeworkhere support", then you tend to get a lot more back for Zend. To me this equates to a lot more people talking about Zend than symfony. More people leads to more support, I'd hope. Compare that to "agavi documentation"** which returns about 12000 results (a factor of 100 less) and while I'm told the fork of this (Mojavi???) is pure MVC, the level of support and use would worry me.
I don't think this really tells you which is best (apparently it's mojavi -according the a strange person at phplondon08) but I think a big community of users is important. That said I quite like symfony although not used it on anything other than silly home projects.
I'm assuming that googling is similar to say searching for dodgy copies of software on the internet. I'm sure there was a study which equated popular (good?) software to its high availability on illegal download sites. If say you compare Photoshop with the Corel one (which I forget the name of) then you find more of photoshop than the other (I avoided comparing Word and wordperfect here).
Not sure that helps but community and documentation are important. Just how large does the community need to be?
Jason
**In fact I did a typo and searched for agavidocumentaiton (no space) and got "Did you mean: java documentation " -ha ha google very funny.
2008/8/13 Jason Bailey <jasonslbai...@yahoo.co.uk>:
> This probably doesn't hold up to much rigorous checking but if you google something like "Zend Documentation" (>1 million) and "Symfony Documentation" or "$yourframeworkhere support", then you tend to get a lot more back for Zend. To me this equates to a lot more people talking about Zend than symfony.
That doesn't stand up to even the least rigorous check, as Zend is the company that make the PHP engine, and it returns all the PHP docs, too. :P
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