Tags: Ruby On Rails,CakePHP,MVC frameworks, Web Development, PHP Framework

Just how much support does Ruby on Rails really have? And if you are looking at a PHP framework, which one is the most popular? 

If one does a simple Google search for Ruby on Rails you get over 30M results returned. This is quite staggering for a framework that is relatively new. So if you are looking for a framework that has a lot of support and information available on the Internet, you can't go wrong with RoR. However, if like me, you are looking at using a PHP framework, the choices can become a bit overwhelming.

http://www.phpwact.org/php/mvc_frameworks lists 40 PHP framewors. 

I took each of these frameworks and did a Google search to try and gauge how much support and buzz is given to the particular framework on the Internet. The results are summarized below. Firstly, I removed all frameworks with less than 100 000 results, since the graph became too big to be legible. And frankly, if a framework search returns less than 100 000 results the chances that you are going to be able to find the information and support that you are going to need to build even a hobby application is going to be very slim. The frameworks returning less than 100 000 results were:

 The frameworks with more than 100 000 results are displayed below. From these results we can see that CakePHP has the most results returned with about 2.3M results, followed by Symfony, with about 2M results.  

 

Some people might feel that this is not a valid way to decide which framework to use. For example, but about the fact that there might be a brilliant framework out there, but due to the fact that it is brand new, it only shows a couple of results in the search engines. Unfortunately, the facts are:

1. The documentation is never enough. Face it, we are dealing here with Open Source enthusiasts whose main interest is to CODE something. Documentation is what happens somewhere in a hellish afterlife for BAD PROGRAMMERS.

The only way to get real support and information when you are stuck with something is often not the formal documentation, but to call on the community - Google the problem or look for a tutorial done by someone else who had the same problem, or ask for help on a forum.

2. If you have ever worked in a big corporate and were involved in any type of product selection, you will know that it is NOT always the 'best' product that wins. It is the one with the best after-sales support and the company with the best perceived stability. I worked in bank, and the motto was: "You can never go wrong with IBM". Pulling this through to the Open Source environment, 'best after sales support' equates to 'best open source community support'.

Conclusion:

If you are prepared to learn the new language and put up with the fact that you are restricted in terms of hosting options, then Ruby is definitely the way to go. If you are looking at sticking with PHP and choosing a framework that is easy to install, runs on PHP 4 and PHP 5, has lots of community support - CakePHP is the way to go.

You can also read my other entry on the exact criteria that I used to select CakePHP for web development here, or read more about our specific web development services here

Tags: Ruby On Rails,CakePHP,MVC frameworks, Web Development, PHP Framework