I’m Loving Code Igniter
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.I'm upgrading some of the behind the scenes systems at UserScape to support customer logins, hosted trials, update mailing lists and a few other goodies. Since I have about 4 minutes to actually spend on all this I've been looking around for a good PHP framework to help me out with the heavy lifting.
In the past I've had very very bad experiences with frameworks, finding them just about useless. One thing I think Rails really got right is that it was pulled from a real product. This gave it a huge leg up where things are just naturally in the right place. It's very subtle, but it's obviously hard to replicate as most frameworks that start as dude's just thinking about the 'best' way to do it stink.
That's why I made sure to note the URL with Rick Ellis (pMachine guy) released http://www.codeigniter.com/ a while back. Code Igniter was pulled from his Expression Engine product and in my first day with it I'm extremely impressed.
It's super quick to get started, even faster than Rails if you ask me. It's actually making PHP fun again! I even had an evil thought pass through my mind of rebuilding HelpSpot on top of it. Of course that's insane, but it's just that good.
The other HUGE plus is that it's PHP4 compatible. I don't use PHP 4 in any production work, but HelpSpot is 4 compatible and most of the PHP install base is 4 so this should be a big plus in the frameworks uptake.
It's not perfect, it could use a few more docs in some places and I'd like to see a bit better way to handle global header/footer type includes but overall it's a very nice package which I'm looking forward to working more with over the next few months.
Discussion
I have been playing with CodeIgniter myself and I agree with you, it's a good project. It's sad that it's not getting that much attention.
And for me, PHP4 support is not 'other' huge plus, is the MAIN HUGE plus. You get a code library which has been tested on variety of shared hosts, that's like an added bonus! Great work by Rick Ellis' crew!
Created by JD on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
Yep I know how that is Bryan 
The hosted trials will definitely be free. As for a date, I don't have one to give out yet but I'm doing everything possible to get it up and running by the end of the month.
Sounds like you have the right mindset. So many companies seem to think customer service isn't a core aspect of their potential success. I think it's the most important factor in success when starting a business.
Created by Ian on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
I'm *really* looking forward to the hosted trial, even if it costs a few bucks to try out. I'm planning out a business for which the support will be a large part of the customer impression. So, I need to really be able to give the software a workout, test my workflows, and so on, for a day or three.
But I'm a little guy, running on a shoestring. I need to do this without making the full financial commitment of a buy, and without making the time commitment to get yet another trial running. So if you have a date for that hosted trial in mind ... I'm on the edge of my seat ...
Created by Bryan on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
Ali: If you want to implement MVC without the other framework fruit have a look at Mojavi. It's combined class file stands at about 50KB (the entire project download is 600K, but alot of that isn't for production use). From what I've looked at, it's purely MVC stuff, with minor session classes and the like. That said, it is poorly documented (but well commented). Regardless of what you do, I hope you have fun with your project!
Created by Kyle M on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
I wouldn't worry too much about the size Ali. HelpSpot is over 7mb now and I've never had one complaint about the size. I mean compared to most software a few mb is still tiny. Obviously though if it doesn't match up well with your style that could be a bigger turn off.
Thanks for the compliment. I hired a designer for everything except for the UI. I just put in tons of hours, read lots of articles, reviewed lots of other peoples work in the area, etc. I just figured the UI was too important to off load. However it's probably the most important part of the product, so if it's really not your bag then I would definitely recommend you hire someone to at least help out.
Also I actually did the design as I went. I know a lot of people do the black and white type thing, but that's not for me. I think it gets you too focused on the code and you tend to forget about the UI and just push all the decisions about it off to the end. Then you end up sacrificing on the UI because you don't want to go in and change a bunch of things to make it really work well.
Created by Ian on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
>>2- Code igniter takes about 2MB in disk space My app’s total disk space (without code igniter and my own coded framework)
Sorry, i meant "With my own coded framework instead of code igniter"
Created by Ali on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
I agree that its a great framework. I'm going to start coding my own product (which is also a web based product like helpspot) in a few days, and I also considered building it on top of this framework. But I changed my mind because:
1- It'll spill half the fun for me if I don't code everything myself..
2- Code igniter takes about 2MB in disk space My app's total disk space (without code igniter and my own coded framework) will be around 2-5MB, so I'm kind of reluctant about adding an additional 2MB to the total space needed.
3- Code igniter doesn't match my personal coding style. E.g it uses just way too many classes, even for including a script it uses $this->load->script() instead of doing a simple include. Soo, it might make debugging harder in some cases.
Even if I code my own framework, i'm definitely going to clone the MVC approach of code igniter!
BTW Ian, I downloaded the trial version of Helpspot (Just to get some ideas/inspiration for my own product!) and I lurrrrved its interface. Are you one of those few coders who're also good at designing, or did you pay someone to do the interface and graphics? If you paid someone, can you give me an idea of what it cost?
I'm thinking about coding a black-and-white version of my app first, and once its ready I'll pay someone to make the black-and-white interface look pretty! Is that what you did too?
Cheers,
Ali.
(Website/Blog URL coming soon!)
Created by Ali on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
Nope, not in my opinion. It doesn't do a lot of what Rails does and that's fine by me. It does have a ActiveRecord DB layer and a few of those other useful features, but it doesn't get as involved in the UI side as rails. Most PHP frameworks are trying to be rails clones and it's a big mess. They do way too much for you which makes them impossible to learn and there always seems to be these little "special" things you have to do to actually make it all work.
Created by Ian on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
I took a fast look at CodeIgniter. Isn't it just a PHP clone of Rails?
Created by /A on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
I also really like that it doesn't try and do too much. It's not getting overly fancy. Just the core stuff and then you can go build the fancy parts on your own, which is how it should be.
Created by Ian on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm
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Created by developers.org.ua » Blog Archive » wee on 05.04.2006 9:05 pm