Let’s try to draw an analogy between the development of sites and the construction of houses. Using a CMS is similar to a construction site using prefabricated structures, sometimes even entire rooms. PHP framework development – building using ready-made blocks. PHP development – building brick by brick. I would like to note right away that the use of pure PHP when writing websites is not justified – since this process takes a very long time.
We considered the development of sites on CMS in the previous part of the article. Let’s see how things are with frameworks. PHP framework is a set of ready-made structures and modules that speed up the development of web applications.
So the advantages of frameworks:
- Development flexibility, which CMS lack;
- High speed of applications and sites compared to sites on CMS. When developing using a framework, only the necessary functionality is included in the site structure. Anything needed in the future will be added as needed;
- All ready-made designs that are included in the framework are tested by programmers with high knowledge of the programming language and framework at the creation stage, which guarantees high quality and good performance of future sites;
- Unlike writing sites in pure PHP, using a framework will significantly speed up development, since it consists of ready-made structures;
- The use of a proven code guarantees the avoidance of possible failures in the further operation of the system, which is possible when writing code in pure PHP;
- Easy to expand and build future functionality, unlike CMS.
The main advantages are described. Let’s see how things are with the cons.
The main disadvantage of using a PHP framework is the need for knowledge of programming or the content of programmers. I would like to make a reservation right away – what seems to be a minus initially may not be such a big obstacle, compared to the obstacles that you may encounter when trying to customize the CMS to suit your needs.
When choosing what exactly you want to develop your future online store, you need to consider several factors. First and foremost is the budget. I can try to give some advice on this. If you are just starting to master e-commerce, you are going to deal with a small product group and you have a very limited budget, it is better to start with a CMS. You can install it yourself, or order the installation and basic configuration service. It won’t cost you a lot of money, but at the same time, it will save you time and money in the future. Despite the apparent simplicity of working with CMS, there are a number of features that may affect the further operation of the site. Therefore, it is still better to trust professionals.
If you have been in e-commerce for more than a year, are hosted on a marketplace, or want to update your online store, it is better to do it on a framework. Then you can immediately eliminate all the shortcomings of the old store, such as:
- Slow work;
- Inconvenient addition of goods;
- Poor SEO optimization;
- Difficulty setting up promotions, etc.
In addition to eliminating shortcomings, they will also add all the necessary functionality that was missing when working with the CMS.
At the moment, the most common three PHP frameworks are:
- Yii;
- Laravel;
- Symfony.
In our country, the Yii 2 framework has gained the most popularity. Many large online stores have been developed on it. We have been working with this framework for the past few years. He has proven himself in a number of projects, including online stores, CRM, and task managers.