Zend Framework is Click Consult’s preferred web application framework. In this blog post I will introduce the main concepts behind Zend Framework and the benefits of using it and other web application frameworks.

What is a Web Application?

In order to understand what a “Web Application Framework” is, we must first understand what a “Web Application” is. In general, it is any website that is complex enough to have its own database, or administration system. These are also known as “dynamic websites”, as opposed to “static websites” which consists solely of fixed HTML pages.

Some examples of Web Applications include Content Management Systems, where the operator of the site is able to login to the website and change content, E-Commerce sites where users can purchase products, and social networking sites, where users can chat and interact with each other.

What is a Web Application Framework?

Web Application Frameworks offer two main advantages. The first is to provide a structure around which the website can be built. This helps greatly with organisation of code as it allows different sections of the website to be split up into different areas. This particularly emphasises splitting up application code and HTML markup code.

For SEO, this is a great benefit as it means that major changes to a page layout, for example, inserting content or meta tags, can be carried out without inadvertantly affecting the functionality of the website. In addition, because the seperate areas of code are split up, it is very easy to manipulate them for other Search Engine Optimisation benefits; such as generating an XML or HTML sitemap with very little extra coding.

The second main advantage is that a framework provides a lot of functionality out of the box which a lot of web applications will utilise. This saves the developer time as they do not have to develop it themselves for each different project they work on. In most cases, the framework’s functionality will be flexible enough to meet the needs of the developer, but if not, most frameworks allow the user to pick and choose which of the framework’s built-in components they can use.

Why Zend Framework?

There are many Web Frameworks available for PHP (the language Click Consult uses to develop websites). The most popular are CakePHP, Zend Framework, CodeIgniter and Symphony. The disadvantage of choosing a less popular framework is that there won’t be so much support available for it; not as many plugins or modules developed for it and it could be less stable due to fewer people taking an interest in its development.

Developing a website in any of the most popular frameworks will have its advantages, but in particular Zend Framework shines for the following reasons:

• It’s developed by Zend, who also develop PHP itself
• It supports all of the features of the latest version of PHP, unlike CakePHP which still targets the previous version
• Developers can use components from the framework without actually developing in the framework structure.
• It is designed to be as flexible as possible
• It is very easy to produce search engine friendly URLs
• The sheer amount of built-in functionality

To keep track of the amount of functionality in Zend Framework, we sent off for a free Zend Framework poster from Mayflower.de. Here it is on our office wall:

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