Is CakePHP preferable for a large scale web application? [closed]

Question

I am a good PHP developer and wanted to develop a large scale web application in PHP. I was thinking about using the CakePHP framework.

Is CakePHP good for large scale web applications?

Should I start learning and using it?

Is CakePHP worth investing time and money or should I go with core PHP or some other framework?

I heard that it is difficult finding support for it in case you are stuck with some issue. Is this correct? I have heard a lot of good things about it as well.

I am looking forward to your guidance.

Answer 1

In terms of support, I believe CakePHP is quite good. They have an active IRC community, as well as their own stackoverflow style website. Additionally there seems to be quite a few proficient CakePHP users on SO.

Although some of the documentation on datasources, creating behaviors and other few bits and pieces is lacking on the CakePHP website.

It all depends on what you're application is also, right tool for the right job.

Answer 2

There is also CodeIgniter which has many of the same sort of features, I suggest you check it out for comparison.

You can create some highly professional and scalable websites using these two frameworks. You are definitely headed in the right direction instead of writing vanilla PHP.

With these frameworks you benefit from using well proven design patterns e.g: the Model View Controller pattern and also utilize many helper classes for database access, form validation and security.

I personally use something called SilverStripe which is a PHP development framework that comes with an optional CMS out of the box so you can get creating basic pages straight away, it is also powerful enough that you can create complex customized web applications relatively easily.

I haven't heard CakePHP having poor support, but that's just me.

Whatever framework you end up choosing will definitely involve a slight learning curve. In my experience, when I started using a framework I started off cursing at the lack of flexibility in what I wanted to do, but this soon made way to the vast productivity improvements when you start learning the correct ways to do things and making use of the classes that do a lot of the heavy lifting for you (form-scaffolding, ORM, form validation, database access, security, etc.).

Good luck.

Answer 3

CakePHP is so far easiest it seems. Once you figure out how to work with Bake commands it becomes a cake walk. I tried Yii, Zend finally settling with cakePHP. With Yii life seemed so hard. Zend was too big to handle.

Answer 4

Hmmmm. For a large scale website you are looking for the best option in my opinion.

CakePHP is helpful when your website require lots of customization. On the other hand options like Joomla or WordPress are good but not preferable for large scale website like you mentioned.

I know most of us had or will face difficulty for very first CakePHP website since it's difficult to find a solution when we are stuck in some cases, but you don't have to worry since we are here in Stack Overflow to help you out.

Answer 5

Yes, CakePHP works well even for large applications. I deployed a partner application on LinkedIn.com using OpenSocial and CakePHP and we were seeing more than 1000 new users everyday. It has been more than 2 years now and the app is seeing steady growth and the app's performance is still very good. (We back it up with 2 Apache web servers and memcached)

Answer 6

What about the Yii PHP framework? It's supposed to be fast and reliable.