In your opinion, which PHP CMS has the best architecture? I don't care about how easy its admin panel is to use, or how many CMS features it has. Right now, I'm after how good its code is (so, please, don't even mention Drupal or Wordpress /shudder). I want to know which ones have a good, solid, OOP codebase.
Please provide as much detail as you can in your replies.
I'd imagine that Expression Engine is good. I haven't used it directly, but the companies other product, Code Igniter seems very clean.
I used SilverStripe ones for simple page. It is a CMS including a framework to extend the basic page code. Since it uses PHP5, the code is well written and expandable OOP. I added my own code for pages in a blink and the backend makes it very easy to add those pages dynamically.
It also participated in the Google Summer of Code.
With this sort of question, assuming 50 different CMSs you will likely get 50 different answers. Most modern CMSs have put serious thought into their architecture... older ones frequently have a more "organic" structure (I'm being polite by using the "organic" bit).
Really the only way to narrow it down is to collect a list of top possibilities and dive in. Install them and try templating a page, creating a simple "hello world" plugin, maybe a simple "SELECT * FROM foo" plugin and see what works for you.
That said, I can vouch that Expression Engine (EE) is pretty good. It is from the folks that created CodeIgnitor (CI) and EE2 is in fact built on CI.
I have no idea, I don't do PHP any more...
But I can answer you in the negative. There's one CMS, no matter how solid it may be, that is totally impenetrable in its internals: Typo3. I've tried for weeks, but I simply couldn't find anything recognizable back from the website in the database, and in no way could I make any sense of the code structure.
Architecture-wise, ezPublish.
When I first looked into it (at the time of PHP4), it had the most sophisticated code and architecture I have ever seen built. It also leveraged PHP4 to the fullest. With recent versions they ported the code base to PHP5 (I believe utilizing their ezComponents as well) and take full advantage of all of what PHP offers.
I know that ezPublish can be a pain to use and IMHO it requires extensive customization etc., but if you are just talking architecture it's as good as it gets.
CodeIgniter is very very cool.. And you also have an open-source project based on CI that's even better: http://kohanaphp.com
In the question I do not know for wath you need all that things. Drupal and Wordpress are working in millions of sites, someones in the first top 100 in visits number.
Then, what "how good its code" means? You want to modify it? You want to improve it? And the OOP Database, Do you need it? For what?
If you give more information, maybe I can make a suggestion.
It all depends on how much effort you want to put into setting up the front-end design, the features/modules, and how user friendly the back-end is.
Try to avoid the PHP-Nuke/Post-Nuke series and variants. Definitely not very clean and unfortunately is mostly a collection of hacks. Granted I have dozens of sites running it that are running great, it was a real PITA to customize. (This also is from using it about 2-3 years ago, maybe they revamped)
Joomla/Mambo is pretty cool. Very Web 2.0 and has a decent community creating all sorts of modules for it. Developing modules is a little rough, at least 2-3 years ago when I worked in it. Cool deployment system and installation system for modules. Lots of companies provide templates you can download (some free) and customize, a real time saver.
If your looking to do something fully custom, then you need a PHP framework. I've been working with CI and absolutely love it. Great forums community as well, though you won't find too many download and install modules to get a CMS going, yes there's a few user authentication libraries and such, but honestly that is about it. Some great screencasts on setting up a blog and page manager which will certainly get you a step in the right direction.
Can't vouch for Zend Framework or Cake PHP, both have their merits and communities, but when I did my research CI at the time fit my development style perfectly.
Don't forget to check the licensing for the cms and frameworks you download. Just because it is free/open source, doesn't mean you can charge for it...
This inquiry contains a conflicting constraint, first, it asks:
"which PHP CMS has the best architecture?"
then adds the constraint:
"I want to know which ones have a good, solid, OOP codebase."
thereby implying that the inquirer grasps tightly & stubbornly to the fallacy that only architectures containing strictly CLASS-based code & CLASSICAL INHERITANCE models are worthy of "best architecture" status (try asking "why", see how far you get); pretty myopic, but also an all-to-commonly-held position... hereby forgiven.
The best answer -- all constraints considered -- is still Drupal.
Which PHP CMS has the best architecture?
The best is the one you build to meet all your needs to the letter. :)
From a security perspective, I'd strongly recommend against Joomla/Mambo, at least the 3rd-party add-ons. Check out http://www.milw0rm.com, do a search on "joomla" and cower in fear.
I would say TypoLight
www.typolight.com
Here is a tutorial on how to create new modules for Typolight
hXXp://dev.typolight.org/wiki/TutorialsExtension
And the Documentation on its Data Container Array
hXXp://dev.typolight.org/wiki/TutorialsDataContainer
My vote goes to modX, It's quite new and even then redeveloped (two versions evolution and revolution) So it doesn't suffer from the bloat unlike the more popular choices. Less plug-ins exist for it, but creating them is quite painless - the architecture is quite well designed. "MODx Revolution is an OOP Framework, built around the database ORM xPDO" http://modxcms.com/
I am admirer of Zend Framework and Modx CMS both.
They have clean OOPS source code with good Documentation.
A flexible architecture.
Continuous up-gradation (bug fixes) and introduction of new features.
The application built upon it can be trusted for robustness and scalability if properly designed.
If really the architecture is the case I would recommend Diem. It's a CMS build over Symfony framework so it is easy do use and extend (at least from programmer perspecive).
the problem with most of these CMS's is that they 1) rely on database tables as entities, 2) use some kind of smarty-ish template that is NOT XSLT, 3) take the MVC pattern too literally and bind the developer to stringent forms of it.
Radicore solves the XSLT problem. My own MyEDB which I threw together over several months ( http://awgtek.blogspot.com/2010/05/codeigniter-versus-myedb.html ) solves these problems.