How to select a PHP framework for the web application development Joomla and WordPress are the best content management system frameworks, whereas Laravel and CodeIgnitor are the best custom web application frameworks. And you are confused as to which framework is suitable for your next web application project. There are many other development frameworks available in the market, and each has its pros and cons. Selecting the suitable framework out of many is not an easy task. Some frameworks are best for one kind of job, and other frameworks are best for other jobs. Web application development is a complex task, and it takes years of effort to understand and develop the right product. And a wrong framework may fail your product development. You should not choose the best framework for your project based on its popularity. Instead, you could start creating a project summary document. It will help you to find core features. And then, you can test the frameworks against your application's features. I have been writing software applications since 2006, and I have developed many web applications for my clients. My work covers small corporate websites to complex internal single-page applications. And after years of experience, I found any web application may belong to the following broad categories; An application processes the data generated by community users and paid users. It supports basic crud operations – Create, Read, Update, and Delete. An application provides informational content in any form – blogs, info-graphics, photos, and videos, and it supports content management features. Sometimes, users need to take a premium subscription to access the content. An application supports custom features depending on business operations, and it gathers data from various sources. These are specific applications for the business, and therefore other corporates can not use the same solution. An application displays real-time tracking information based on various data collected from different sources. An application lists products, and it allows its users to make a purchase. It may support a single store or multiple stores. Now, review your project summary and decide if your product features belong to one of the above categories or overlapping one or two categories. Yes, it is possible. There are many web application development frameworks, and selecting the framework is harder. And a wrong framework makes your application development complex and fragile. Your development team may not scale it and may not create custom features. And sometimes, the framework is a big issue. Based on my experience, I evaluated each framework, and the following is the detail about which framework is best for what tasks; Joomla framework Joomla framework is a content management system, and it provides many content features out of the box. You could install it and starts publishing your content. Sometimes, you do not need to install any third-party extension, and the core Joomla framework is sufficient. In other cases, you could find them from the directory and install them. Joomla framework is best suitable for the following features; Content management. It supports blogs and photos out of the box. But you need to install third-party extensions for other content. User management and authorities. You could support multiple subscriptions without writing a single line of code. Custom interfaces depending on assigned authorities. Best template management system. And you could create any other complex feature using its third-party extension development mechanism. WordPress framework WordPress framework is a content management system, and it provides many content features out of the box. Almost, almost 60% of blog websites are using the WordPress framework. WordPress's strength lies in its third-party plugins ecosystem. You can find many plugins – free and paid. WordPress framework is best suitable for the following features; Content management. It supports blogs and photos out of the box. And you can find the best free extension for supporting other content as well. User management. It supports user management out of the box. But, you need to install a third-party plugin to support the authorities' mechanism. SEO support out of the box. This framework is best suitable for a content-based application, where you are publishing your content and then waiting for users to consume it. Many content creators are using it because of the ease of setting up and running it. Laravel framework Laravel framework is a PHP framework. It provides core features to create a web application and allows you to extend it. The developer team prefers the Laravel framework when it needs to create large web applications. And those require many complex features. The framework provides good documentation for the developers. And third-party developers are creating new libraries for supporting and extending it further. Laravel framework can use in the following situations; Complex and custom features Security and other concerns. Third-party API integration and data providers. CodeIgnitor framework CodeIgnitor framework is a PHP development framework. It provides core features that you can use to create back-end applications. CodeIgnitor framework is best suitable in the following features; Small application to support business operations. Data provider by creating back-end API.