I’ll admit, I’ve jumped on the framework bandwagon. I tried Zend for a while but it was far too much hassle for me and too complex for a first timer to that kind of system. I gave up on frameworks for that reason and went back to producing my own codebase, until I discovered CodeIgniter!

What is CodeIgniter?

CodeIgniter is a lightweight yet powerful PHP framework for creating full-featured web applications. It boasts a very “simple and elegant toolkit” used by millions of developers in the world of shared web hosting and clients with strict deadlines.

What does CodeIgniter mean to me?

As a professional and freelance web developer I often have to dish out new, sometimes small, web applications quickly and to a high standard. Instead of going through the laborious task of setting up a new website from scratch I now simply extract a fresh installation (or sometimes a custom set template) of CodeIgniter and I have the mainframe already in place ready to go. I also love CodeIgniter because it is based on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture. I’m a big believer in keeping the processing code away from the styling and stuctural code, basically keeping the designers and developers in seperate files. The designer should never need to see any scripting code such as PHP simply because they have no need to.

How have I found CodeIgniter so far?

Did I mention I love it? It is so easy to learn it is unreal! The user documentation supporting the framework is so detailed and simple to follow. I haven’t had any major problems thus far and I’ve created some rather large applications using the cache, session and many other libraries that come as standard with the system. All minor problems have been sorted just through common sense or by a quick search of the manual.

Would I go back to creating web applications without a framework?

The simple answer is yes, but I have my reasons. Some applications do not require frameworks because they are either so small or require a custom built framework. I have built large-scale websites in the past without any framework and I will continue to maintain them as they are in their current working state, although I’d like to convert them onto the framework as soon as I can. This is also important because other developers needing to update/change the application can do so with minimal learning required.

So that’s about it for CodeIgniter from me at the moment. I intend to write a quick tutorial on setting up a new application using the framework just to prove how easy and lightweight it really is. You can download CodeIgniter for free from the CodeIgniter website.