Why you should be using a framework

PHP frameworks like CakePHP, CodeIgniter and the Zend Framework (which I wasn't too taken with) provide a solid structure for your code whilst also offering some extra functionality that would be much harder to replicate on its own. It's important to note, too, the frameworks mentioned follow the MVC pattern, which is fairly common and what I'll talk about below — some of these benefits will apply to other patterns as well, but not all.

Of course, if you're not taken with any of the packages above you can also write your own framework, which I've done and will talk about in the next few posts. But for now, let's have a look at the common benefits of a framework.

Top 5 Frameworks in php:

Yii:

http://www.yiiframework.com
Yii is a robust, modular PHP framework that is well-suited for developing large-scale Web applications. Yii comes standard with a full host of features, including MVC, ActiveRecord, caching, AJAX libraries, authentication and authorization components, input validation, Web services, and many more.

CodeIgniter:

http://codeigniter.com
CodeIgniter is a powerful PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant toolkit to create full-featured web applications.

CakePHP:
http://cakephp.org

CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications. Using commonly known design patterns like MVC and ORM within the convention over configuration paradigm, CakePHP reduces development costs and helps developers write less code.

Zend:
http://www.zend.com

Zend emphasizes flexible architecture and contains a host of addons, such as Zend Server, Zend Studio, and Zend Platform

Symfony:
http://www.symfony-project.org

Symfony advertises itself as a framework for enterprise applications. The framework seeks to provide a high degree of control over the configuration: from directory structure to external libraries, almost all parameters can be customized. Symfony is also bundled with a host of tools for testing, debugging and documentting a web application.