Best PHP Frameworks for PHP Websites

A proper PHP framework enables developers to develop PHP application quickly, efficiently and with more simplicity. Choosing the proper PHP Framework is important, because it adds an element of robustness and success to the process.

There are numerous frameworks that are available over the Internet with a unique approach and benefits aimed at developers. Everything depends on the developer end, as to which particular Framework he would choose to serve his purposes.

Basically, a framework consists of:

• A toolbox - a set of prefabricated, rapidly integratable software components.

This means that you will have to write less code, with less risk of error. This also means greater productivity and the ability to devote more time to doing those things which provide greater added value, such as managing guiding principles, side effects, etc.

• A methodology – an “assembly diagram” for applications. A structured approach may seem constraining at first. But in reality it allows developers to work both efficiently and effectively on the most complex aspects of a task, and the use of Best Practices guarantees the stability, maintainability and upgradeability of the applications you develop.

We conducted a search on several of these PHP frameworks which offer developers more in terms of usability, speed, and stability, and concluded on 5 PHP frameworks which we believe will be suited to most developers needs, and if you have a preferred Framework by which you work with aside from the ones listed here, please do let us know by dropping us your feedback in the comment section below.

Yii Framework : Fast, Secure and Pro PHP Framework

Yii is one of the most popular and top Framework amongst all PHP Frameworks. The main motto of Yii php framework is to assist web 2.0 based websites. Yii has myriad of features such as MVC, DAO/ActiveRecord, I18N/L10N, caching, authentication and role-based access control, scaffolding, testing, open source, high performing, object oriented, database access object, easy form validation, default support for web services and many more. Yii Framework is ideal and perfect for developing social networking websites reduces development time significantly.

Cake PHP

Another popular PHP Framework is CakePHP which can be consider as a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front Controller and MVC. The goal is to provide a structured framework that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.

Zend Framework

Zend Framework is a leading open-source PHP framework has a flexible architecture that lets you easily build modern web applications and web services. Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications & web services.

Symfony : High Performance PHP Framework

Symfony is a web application framework; symfony follows the model-view-controller (MVC) system and getting more popular day by day. Symfony is a free framework under the MIT license, Symfony has made development easy with the help of library which comprises of many PHP code classes.

Laravel : A Framework for Web Artisans

Laravel is a clean and classy framework for PHP web development. Freeing you from spaghetti code, Laravel helps you create wonderful applications using simple, expressive syntax. Laravel is well readable and well-documented that helps you speed up your coding. Laravel makes development easy and more creative for developers and lets them produce some outstanding result with it.

CREATE A CUSTOM THEME IN MAGENTO 1.7

I am creating a site which is banitous.com it is shopping site and i have used the Magento CMS. In this article you get the point how to create a custom theme in the Magento CMS. We use the already by defualt themes for easiness, we will create a theme based on the default theme for my shopping site banitous.com.  If you need your totally your own Magento CMS themes you will have all information in this regard.

We need to understand the Directory structure for CREATE A CUSTOM THEME IN MAGENTO 1.7

First Part:

Directory Structure

The first step for creating a themes in magento cms  is creating a directory in the custom themes for this you need to understand the structure for that .

You need to understand the Package & Theme. what is themes or packages in Magento CMS?

Look at the directory structure below and see whether you recognize it.  Please Notice that the  folder default has a sub-directory also called default? In this scenario, the first folder called default is a packages being used while the sub-directory called default is the theme. Also notice that the default package has another sub-directory called custom-theme.  the developer put the new theme at here. While this works, this is not the correct way to structure your themes.

• app/design/frontend/default


• app/design/frontend/default/default


• app/design/frontend/default/default/layout


• app/design/frontend/default/default/template

• app/design/frontend/custom-theme/default


• app/design/frontend/custom-theme/default/layout


• app/design/frontend/custom-theme/default/template

The default package houses 2 separate themes. In theory, a package is used to put as many themes as you like. The amazing feature of this system is that as well as having your base theme.

That means you can put your no of custom themes in the packages.

The Directory Structure in Magento 1.7

Step 2: You totally understand the meaning of themes and packages at here now we are going to create the directory structure in Magento 1.7.

• app/design/frontend/base


• app/design/frontend/base/default


• app/design/frontend/base/default/etc


• app/design/frontend/base/default/layout


• app/design/frontend/base/default/template

• app/design/frontend/default


• app/design/frontend/default/default

• app/design/frontend/fishpig/default


• app/design/frontend/fishpig/default/layout


• app/design/frontend/fishpig/default/template


• app/design/frontend/fishpig/fish-theme


• app/design/frontend/fishpig/fish-theme/layout


• app/design/frontend/fishpig/fish-theme/template

You'll see in the above directory structure is identical apart from the addition of the folder called base. These kind of  package contains a theme named default, which contains all of the base template files needed for a Magento cms theme. The base package serves as the final fall back package. Let's talk about the fall back so that we can clearly understand exactly how to structure our package.

Template Fall Back in Magento 1.7

This subject almost deserves an article of it's own, however, I will try and condense it here without stripping too much out. In the above directory structure, there are 3 packages:

• base - contains the theme default


• default - contains the theme default


• banitous- contains the themes default and banitous-theme

Using the above structure, let's try to complete the custom themes in the pakcages called banitous we used the custom themes which is called the banitous-theme in the banitous package.

In our structure, Magento would first look in the banitous-theme . If the file could not be found here, it would next check the default theme inside the banitous package. If the file wasn't found here it would then look inside the default theme inside the base package. If this file could not be found Magento would throw an exception saying it could not find the template file needed and execution would stop.

When trying to access view.phtml, Magento would access the following files until either the page was found or an exception was thrown.

• app/design/frontend/fishpig/fish-theme/catalog/template/product/view.phtml


• app/design/frontend/fishpig/default/catalog/template/product/view.phtml


• app/design/frontend/base/default/catalog/template/product/view.phtml

We are now presented with two options:

1. Allow our theme to fall back to base/default


2. Copy over base/default files to fishpig/default and use that as our fall back

Both options are valid and each have their own advantages and disadvantages. For this tutorial, I will be leaving all of the core files in base/default and falling back to that. I will be doing this mainly because it will be easier and require less work from you at this point.

We need to understand the skin folder of the magento?

Just like the template and layout folders, the skin folders operate using base/default as a fall back. While templates can be vary similar cross-theme, CSS will most likely be entirely different. Because of this, the default CSS and JS are stored in default/default rather than base/default.

Enough talk, let's create our directory structure!

For this example I'm going to create a package called banitous and a theme called banitous-theme. Start by creating the following folders:

• app/design/frontend/banitous


• app/design/frontend/banitous/default


• app/design/frontend/banitous/default/layout


• app/design/frontend/banitous/default/template


• app/design/frontend/banitous/fish-theme


• app/design/frontend/banitous/fish-theme/layout


• app/design/frontend/banitous/fish-theme/template

• skin/frontend/banitous


• skin/frontend/banitous/default


• skin/frontend/banitous/banitous-theme

Now that you have created the necessary folders, copy over the contents of skin/frontend/default/default toskin/frontend/banitous/banitous-theme.

Now that we have created a custom theme, it is time to enable it in Magento.

Enabling our Package/Theme in Magento 1.4

To enable your new theme, login to your Magento admin section and go to System > Configuration > Design. When the page has loaded, notice that the first 2 sections of the page are titled Package and Themes. In the top section, set your package as fishpig and in the second section, set all input boxes (except the 1 titled Default) to be fish-theme. Once you have done this, save the page and refresh the Magento cache.

It should be pointed out, that if you ever encounter any problems with your custom theme, you can always switch back to the default theme by emptying the input boxes under Packages and Themes in the Magento configuration.

Now that our new theme is being used by Magento, let's add some code and test whether or not it has worked.

Creating a template file

Earlier on we used the example of the product view template (catalog/product/view.phtml), so let us continue with this example. Using your favourite FTP program (Transmit <3), create the following files/folders:

• app/design/frontend/fishpig/fish-theme/template/catalog


• app/design/frontend/fishpig/fish-theme/template/catalog/product


• app/design/frontend/fishpig/fish-theme/template/catalog/product/view.phtml

Although view.phtml is empty, you have successfully created your first template file. Open your browser and browse to a product page in Magento. You should notice that the content section of the page is now totally empty. Can you think why this is?

To understand what has just happened, let's discuss fall back again. So you don't have to scroll up, I've included the file locations Magento checks for view.phtml before it throws an exception.

• app/design/frontend/fishpig/fish-theme/template/catalog/product/view.phtml


• app/design/frontend/fishpig/default/template/catalog/product/view.phtml


• app/design/frontend/base/default/template/catalog/product/view.phtml

Before we created view.phtml in fish-theme, Magento would check each location until it finally found the file in the base/default theme; no exception would be thrown and the product page would be displayed successfully. Now though, we have created view.phtml in the first place that Magento looks. Now that Magento has found the file, it stops checking the other directories and parses and renders the content inside our custom template!

Adding code to the template file

So far we have a custom template file, however, we don't have any code in it! To prove that this is working, let's add some code.

?

1 2	<?php $_product = $this->getProduct() ?> <h2><?php echo $_product->getName() ?></h2>

The above code is simple but should prove that your custom theme is working and is successfully over riding core template files.

Customising the default Magento theme

So far what we have done has been more of a learning exercise. Now let us look how to make some useful changes to the default template, before finally learning how to build a totally custom theme.

In this example, rather than re-code view.phtml, we will copy across the default contents and modify them slightly. To do this, copy the contents from base/default/catalog/product/view.phtml to the custom view.phtml you have created. Save this file and reload the product page. You should notice that product page has returned to it's original state. You can now modify any of this code to customise the product page as you wish. You can do this knowing that you haven't modified any core template files and if needs be, you can always revert back to the old files knowing no damage has been done. This can be done for ANY template file in Magento and not just your product page.

The beauty of this system is that you can create a great looking theme without having to write a lot of code. Using the base/default files, some customisations in your own theme folder and some pretty CSS, it possible to create great looking themes in a matter of hours.

Creating a totally custom theme in Magento 1.4

The above examples have shown us how to create themes based on the default theme. For a lot of developers, this is more than useful, however, sometimes pure customisation is the only thing that will satisfy a client. To create a totally custom theme, simply follow the above steps. The only difference is that with a totally customised theme, the majority of files wouldn't fall back to base/default and would instead, exist in your theme folder. A great way to ensure that your theme doesn't fall back to base/default is to copy the contents of base/default to fishpig/default. If you do this and a file isn't present in fishpig/fish-theme, Magento will fall back to fishpig/default. The benefit of this is that you can modify the files in fishpig/default without worrying about breaking any other themes or having to modify core code!

Conclusion

Hopefully this article will help developers to start creating their own custom themes. If there are any bits of this article that aren't clear, please let me know and I will do my best to clarify.