So, you've been hearing more and more about all of the PHP frameworks that are available (CakePHP, Zend Framework, etc) but feel left wondering what really powers them behind the scenes (what is MVC anyway?). Well, this new article from DevShed might help to shed some light on things.

Would you like to learn how to simulate an MVC-based system with PHP? If so, you've come to the right place. This is the first article in a three-part series that will show you how to build this schema in PHP by constructing a few classes that represent what is needed.

They start off introducing the Model/View/Controller style of development, showing it as a cleaner alternative for web site development. From there, they break out into the different parts of an application - first a look at the controller to handle the requests, then a basic model class to perform the logic, and then the view to show the results of the script on the page. Their simple application allows for some string manipulation (uppercase, lowercase, reversing, etc).