LebGeeks

Ayman

Member

[Discussion] Open Source Project - To Use Or Not To Use A Framework

Good morning friends. Recently I have been considering setting up a personal blog, yet none of the available blogging systems today really contain exactly what I have in mind without having to customize. Wordpress would be the number one choice of anyone but given its old crappy code base and security holes especially within its plugins make me want to turn away. Furthermore, I am enthusiastic to start an open source project for what is exactly in my mind.

I want to build a modern, secure and light personal blogging system that would have everything any blogger would think of straight out of the box without any effort. I want to bring an effortless and rich experience for the user.

Anyways, my project is going to be in Php and will be hosted on Github. I have planned most of the stuff including features, default template design etc... But I am bit not sure whether to use a framework not so well known or not. I really like the Silex micro framework but it is not really popular among all developers. Also I won't be using Php as a templating engine Twig is much neater.

But the problem(or at least what I think may be a problem) is that many developers out there are not really into that framework or maybe not into any framework. Would that let them refrain from contributing to the project? I am thinking a bit to the long term but I am aspiring to create a community around the project in case it turned out to be something good. Furthermore, I am afraid that custom theme developers would refrain from getting into it if they see a framework they are not really comfortable with. If you look at word press one of the main reasons why it is so popular is the amount of theme and plugins available. It has a very crappy codebase yet many developers would find it very easy.

At the same time I don't want to build something crappy for the sake of popularity either. So if you were in my shoes what would you actually do? Use a framework for such a project or build your own sort of a framework?

Thank you.

Last edited by Ayman (March 5 2012)

xterm

Moderator

Re: [Discussion] Open Source Project - To Use Or Not To Use A Framework

Somewhat unrelated tweet i read a few days back: "Let's argue about whether Haskell or Clojure is better while somebody else ships products using PHP and duct tape."

Somewhat unrelated topic of interest.

Finally, everyone please keep in mind that this is a discussion topic not an X vs Y topic.

arithma

Member

Re: [Discussion] Open Source Project - To Use Or Not To Use A Framework

Just mind you, that while considering what people would be more comfortable with is a valid concern, shouldn't the ultimate concern be which platform/mix you are most comfortable with? Otherwise, why not just contribute to Wordpress?
If you're interested in silex for example, I advice you to start with it. When you have something solid, let the silex community know about it so they can feed in. If it's successful you can lure in other people with cool features and so on.

My 2 cents

rolf

Member

Re: [Discussion] Open Source Project - To Use Or Not To Use A Framework

Somewhat unrelated tweet i read a few days back: "Let's argue about whether Haskell or Clojure is better while somebody else ships products using PHP and duct tape."

The thing with PHP is that it can be used to produce a horrible, taped-together mess as well as elegant, readable and organized code...

So I don't particularly like to see it in this position, but I see your point :)

Joe

Member

Re: [Discussion] Open Source Project - To Use Or Not To Use A Framework

Ayman,

It doesn't seem your idea has anything new. You said something,"without having to customize". I understand it as "I want to code a Wordpress that will be different from the vanilla/stock version of Wordpress". Nevermind the fact that Wordpress can be tweaked to get pretty flexible, and that it has about one billion clones in existence (PHP clones none-the-less).

Your question seems to be: "How to create a community of open source developers around my project?". I don't have the answer, but I can assure that cloning an existing, available and widely used project will not really motivate a lot of people.

On the other hand, you are right to ask questions about the choice of technology. The problem is that you're thinking about it from the wrong perspective. You shouldn't ask if open source developers will be interested in a Silex Wordpress-like. But rather you should ask if the Silex community would be interested in developing a wordpress-like. Silex is basically Symfony, so you would be exposed to a very large community of developers, however ask yourself how many of them do want to work on yet-another-blog-platform.

In short: Writing your own Wordpress will probably not motivate a lot of developers (especially in the PHP world. The best ones are already working on Wordpress/Joomla/Drupal/...). It doesn't matter which technology you use (with or without a framework).

On the other hand, do not code this website from scratch. We've been over this before.

darklight555

Member

Re: [Discussion] Open Source Project - To Use Or Not To Use A Framework

Ayman,

I understand your frustration with Wordpress and all the security issues it poses. But on the other hand, do you think that the concept you want to work on will be shielded against those security threats. Wordpress is a big open-source project, with many developers constantly improving the codebase and introducing fixes. I don't think that that any newly-introduced product can be really secure because the developers are not yet aware of all the possible threats.

At the same time, I support the idea of creating a new blogging platform that shies away from the anarchic code of Wordpress or the complexity of other offerings.