The SitePoint PHP blog has a new post today from Matthew Beaumont with severn reasons to choose Yii2 as your framework for your next project. The Yii framework is a full-stack framework option and has been around for a long time. It recently reinvented itself with version 2 and has improved a lot of the original functionality.

Late last year, SitePoint published an article highlighting the top PHP frameworks. Tied for the number four spot was the Yii (pronounced Yee) Framework. At that time the latest version of the framework available was 1.1.14. Recently, Yii 2.0 was made available, so you can begin to use it in production. While we did cover it recently when it was still in RC status, it just reached full release status, and we feel like it's time to revisit the topic with some reasons for choosing it over alternatives.

He includes brief descriptions with each of his seven points (some with links to other information too):

• Easy to Install
• Utilizes Modern Technologies
• Highly Extensible
• Encourages Testing
• Simplifies Security
• Shorten Development Time
• Easy to Tune for Better Performance

Some of the items in the list include code snippets showing how they're implemented as well. Be sure to give it a look if you're trying to decide on your next framework or toolset.

Lorna Mitchell has a new post today sharing some helpful hints to help you pick a good PHP hosting provider for your next application or website.

I've been thinking a lot about the state of hosting in PHP lately, mostly as a result of working with a few different clients on their setups (including one that bought brand new hosting a month ago and got a PHP 5.3.3 platform), and also being at DrupalCon and meeting a community who is about to make a big change to their minimum requirements. With that in mind, here are my thoughts and tips on choosing hosting.

She starts off with one of the bigger criteria she looks for in a host: the minimum PHP version available (some might have more than one, especially some PaaS). She suggests that even things like PHP 5.3 should be considered too old and should be passed over in favor of newer releases like 5.5 or even 5.6. She then talks about some of the benefits that come from using a newer platform and the current levels of adoption and performance by PHP version. Finally, she includes an unofficial list of hosts that have set themselves out as good, solid PHP-friendly providers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Noupe.com has a few suggestions for you when you go to pick out your next content management system with ten guidelines that can help:

The content management system you choose can really make a huge difference in how much time you (or your clients) spend keeping a site updated and maintained. There's a huge variety out there-some estimates put the number at around 1700 different options. Some are great...some, not so much.

Among the suggestions are things like:

• A CMS needs to work intuitively.
• The backend needs to be logical and well-organized.
• The right CMS shouldn't have a ton of extra functionality you'll never use.
• The right CMS should be easy for non-geeks to use.
• The pages it creates should be fast-loading and have simple code.

They also mention a few options available that might be a good fit for you and your organization: WordPress, SilverStripe, Joomla! and a few more.

Fred Wu has put together a comparison of three of the more well-known PHP frameworks out there - CodeIgniter, Kohana and the relative newcomer Yii.

It was over a year ago that I wrote the article that compares CodeIgniter and Kohana. Since then both CodeIgniter and Kohana have seen major progress with the release of CodeIgniter 1.7.0 and Kohana 2.3. [...] Let's see how they compare with each other.

He judges on a list of criteria including licensing, supported databases, community, documentation and modularity. Ratings are gives for each framework (like "Excellent" or "Good") on each item with over twenty aspects considered.

The Total PHP site has a few suggestions for you to look at before choosing your next web host - five of them:

• PHP 4 or 5? - if you haven't made the switch to PHP5, there's no better time
• Linux/Apache - Windows is largely an ASP.NET platform
• Access to outside the document root - it can be very useful for templates, config files and the like
• Scripting requirements - be sure anything you might need for an outside application (like WordPress) is there
• General advice

There's a bit more detail on each of the points to round out the advice.

Nik Chankov feels pretty strongly about the CakePHP framework - strong enough that he's written up a post of ten reasons why he thinks you should choose Cake over other PHP frameworks.

Here I want to list all those things, but near to each of them I will give short explanation what is it and how CakePHP implement it. So, if somebody ask me what are those 10 things which drive me to choose this framework as my primary one I will answer with [this list].

Included in his list are things like it's MVC pattern, the object relational mapping, that it's easily extensible, has ajax support and makes the CRUD scaffolding easy.

Nik Chankov feels pretty strongly about the CakePHP framework - strong enough that he's written up a post of ten reasons why he thinks you should choose Cake over other PHP frameworks.

Here I want to list all those things, but near to each of them I will give short explanation what is it and how CakePHP implement it. So, if somebody ask me what are those 10 things which drive me to choose this framework as my primary one I will answer with [this list].

Included in his list are things like it's MVC pattern, the object relational mapping, that it's easily extensible, has ajax support and makes the CRUD scaffolding easy.

Whether you're just coming into the world of the web or you're an old hand just looking for something different - a different CMS, that is - this new article over on NewsForge today might help you sift out a few you might not want.

It seems as if everyone is a Web publisher today -- from the habitual bloggers and online diarists to the companies running major news outlets, portals, and magazines -- and they're all using some kind of database-backed content management system (CMS) to do it. There are a lot of CMS choices -- Drupal, Mambo, Bricolage, WordPress, and Plone are some of the most recognizable names. While they all perform the same basic functions, you have to pick only one. How do you do it?

He goes through two different questions to think about before you settle on the one you'd like to use:

• What to look for - including the licensing, what language it's in, is the project active, is there support for it?
• Which is the right one for me? - does it have the features you want, is it 'just a blog' when you need 'just a blog', how customizable is it?

Check out the comments too for some great opinions already voiced.

Whether you're just coming into the world of the web or you're an old hand just looking for something different - a different CMS, that is - this new article over on NewsForge today might help you sift out a few you might not want.

It seems as if everyone is a Web publisher today -- from the habitual bloggers and online diarists to the companies running major news outlets, portals, and magazines -- and they're all using some kind of database-backed content management system (CMS) to do it. There are a lot of CMS choices -- Drupal, Mambo, Bricolage, WordPress, and Plone are some of the most recognizable names. While they all perform the same basic functions, you have to pick only one. How do you do it?

He goes through two different questions to think about before you settle on the one you'd like to use:

• What to look for - including the licensing, what language it's in, is the project active, is there support for it?
• Which is the right one for me? - does it have the features you want, is it 'just a blog' when you need 'just a blog', how customizable is it?

Check out the comments too for some great opinions already voiced.