Shift8 Creative Graphic Design and Website Development

Of course, I fall in love with a new framework the minute that I'm top of my game and have an answer for (almost) everything, every project and every need. So like the title says, Lithium is the gem that swayed me away from CakePHP. I'm going to continue to use both. CakePHP is still an extremely good framework that allows you to very quickly produce sites/apps.

I originally planned to get all super technical and prove how wonderful CakePHP and Croogo are. They are. It is worthwhile running load tests? Yes, I think we are lacking a lot of statistical data out there on modern open source CMS'. More than just the statistical data, I was also going to throw in actual real world data and (as delicately and legally as possible) explain which and why certain things failed. I'll get back to it, I promise. I've just taken a little detour.

So this framework...Lithium. What is it? Well, it's not super new, it's been around for some time, but it's definitely gaining some steam and is starting to sway some CakePHP people. It is what was going to be Cake3. Basically an MVC framework (with similar conventions to CakePHP) but geared strictly for PHP 5.3 and above. It takes advantage of the new features in PHP 5.3 and I think that's just honestly where I want to keep my head right now.

That's not to say CakePHP won't either and that Croogo or CakePHP are bad. No, I'm still using Croogo and will still be building add-ons for it and following the community tightly. Croogo and CakePHP are absolutely positively the first thing I grab for when building new sites 90% of the time. I don't get huge sites to work with every day you know. 

However, what about those big sites? Ah, the ones that gave me headaches? The ones I slept at the office (no joke) in order to build? Sleep deprived stumbling across downtown Manhattan trying to catch a bus to get some real sleep all the while trying not to get hit by a taxi....Oh right right. Yea, those good old sites. I believe...No, I know that they don't have to end up being horror stories. I need to keep my sanity and I don't want to be in that kind of position again. So I think by learning Lithium and maybe even reviving an old personal project...I'll be able to have a solution for those that keeps me sane and happy. Just like Croogo and CakePHP are my solutions for small to medium sized sites and custom apps...I think Lithium will be my solution...or my shield to the monsters out there. Of course this is all assuming that I have a choice in how the monsters are built. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. 

I will also probably write up some information, discoveries, and tutorials for Lithium as well...Right now their documentation isn't the best, but there's an extremely helpful and knowledge able community. You can find out more about Lithium here.