CodeIgniter
I recently wrote a php-based site that would handle movie trailer scraping for third party media applications. It was my first foray into building a php site from the ground up and it wasn’t too difficult. The whole process of learning php, mysql and jquery and coding the site took about 10-14 days. Unfortunately during the transfer between hosts I lost everything (never trust that your FTP will download everything overnight and then not double check that it did) and I was pretty disappointed that I had lost the site I had just finished coding and was about to be released.
However, HighJinx from the #natit community suggested I give the CodeIgniter (CI) framework a try when rewriting it. I only started using CodeIgniter yesterday and must say that the framework really speeds up the coding process and makes your code a lot cleaner. The MVC structure might take a little while to get used to but if you have any previous programming experience, it shouldn’t be too difficult. So, if you are new to php or haven’t tried CI yet, give it a try.
What I haven’t been able to find yet is a suitable coding application for php and the CI framework. I tried Dreamweaver, Aptana, Zend Studio, Notepad++ and all have had various problems. If anyone has a suggestion, please post a comment!