Since running the PHPkitchen awards a little while ago, quite a few developers have written in to say thanks for the community’s tips and pointers regarding the best apps out there. I think it’s important to point out that many of the contenders that don’t have top votes in their category are still top quality applications, sometimes better than the most popular ones – in my opinion 
. Also, the term ‘best xxx’ is used as a title mainly because that’s what most people search for, but I think it’s appropriate to think of ‘top quality xxx’ because all the top scorers are winners.
Nevertheless, there are still many visitors who don’t know what has been developed by the PHP community in any given application category, so the ‘best of’ series can serve as an indicator here. If you have a particular experience with an app please mention it in the comments section as this will most likely be helpful for other readers.
As always, the PHP ‘best of’ series is made up of feedback by readers for readers, so please forward any suggestions for news apps I have missed out. There will be a permanent link in the right column to make this info easier to find.
December 17th, 2002 at 2:54 pm
only four of these qalify — binarycloud, blueshoes, horde, and sitemanager.
December 17th, 2002 at 4:05 pm
I\’m never too sure about these anonymous comments
If you have an opinion by all means explain yourself, I\’m curious to hear your comments. There are many ways to introduce yourself, however \"do you know what app framework means?\" presupposes you are addressing an idiot.
December 17th, 2002 at 6:57 pm
As flattered as I am to see my PHlexDB included, I would have to agree that PHlexDB is really not an application framework. It\’s a content management framework — in so much as PHlexDB provides any \"framework\" it\’s just a framework for working with inter-related content entities.
December 18th, 2002 at 2:16 am
Thanks for your comments, I\’ve removed PHlexDB as per your wishes.
One of the things I was trying to achieve was to point people in the direction of the relative strengths of each framework listed. PHlexDB, for example, I believe has one of the more interesting APIs for data modelling and has an edge with \"automatically filtering [data] on row-level permissions\".
December 18th, 2002 at 11:27 am
eZ publish most definately is. What confuses people is it also provides a whole load of ready rolled applications but you\’re not forces to use any of them.
One other for the list: Krysalis http://www.interakt.ro/products/Krysalis/index.php
December 18th, 2002 at 3:45 pm
Thanks for the suggestion, please see next comment
December 18th, 2002 at 3:46 pm
To keep a level playing field the survey needs to be restricted to Open Source projects, ie projects licensed under GPL or GPL-compatible licenses. The goal after all is for developers to be able to learn from frameworks out there, something which the Krysalis license, for example, prohibits.
If anyone knows what license Fusebox is under please let me know, it doesn\’t seem to have any license at all.
December 18th, 2002 at 5:20 pm
– pb@dbex.org
December 18th, 2002 at 5:23 pm
Well, I screwed that HTML up nicely. Let’s try again:
December 19th, 2002 at 10:41 am
Ampoliros is a framework / application server too. Have a look at its white paper (http://www.ampoliros.com/en/docs/whitepaper.php) and at this interview about ampoliros: http://www.oetrends.com/cgi-bin/page_display.cgi?136
December 19th, 2002 at 8:53 pm
added, thanks
December 26th, 2002 at 1:40 pm
Often overlooked because of its groupware slant, the API is nothing more than a generic framework. As a testament to its usefulness the collection of apps for phpGW is quite long and various.
http://www.phpgroupware.org