Should I use a PHP Framework? If so, which one?

Submitted by Derick Ng on 2 January 2009 - 8:48pm

Hi,

Ive been researching into PHP frameworks. I am trying to understand the utility of these frameworks.

For e.g. does facebook use a framework? I guess not.

Also, say I am developing a product which I want to sell users. Now suppose a use a framework like Zend, then I am unnecessarily imposing restrictions of using PHP 5 only. A lot of servers are running on PHP 4. So is it worth it in that sense?

I know CakePHP supports both 4 & 5. But a lot of places they have mentioned that CakePHP lacks scalability. I know that all frameworks add their own overhead because of bootstrapping.

Also, how useful is MVC model. Is it worth enforcing in application development (especially if some of them maybe quite small and easy to manage)?

Thank you.

UPDATE

I have been going through a lot of frameworks- CakePHP, CI, Zend... And am honestly confused. Which one to use? How to decide which is better than which? Also, I plan to develop products (like wordpress) which users can download and install on their servers. If I use Zend then I must make sure that the user has a host which supports Zend, if I use Smarty then the user's host should support Smarty. Now that will definitely limit my customer base. I want it to be as expansive as possible (for maximum profits ofcourse :)

For example, I dont see any frameworks being used by wordpress, but it seems to be doing pretty well... so...

Please suggest the best option....

Thank you again.