Going from small to medium sized websites.

Question

I've been coding websites for a couple of years now, mostly in php and xhtml. I come from the design world, but I'm proud of doing standart compliant websites and great interfaces. Also used Wordpress and loved it. Most of the time there were really simple commercial websites, with no database included, where everything is done from scratch. Every page is parsed through an index?page=xxx and

But I have a few prospects that are larger websites (let's call them 'medium sized websites') where I feel I'm lacking the following:

• How to dispach or render the pages (MVC controller instead of index?page=???)
• Proper page hierarchy and easy breadcrumbs implementation
• Auto generation of navigation menu, or an easy way to maintain them?
• Clean URLs
• Form validation
• Easy database support

I really don't know if I should be looking into php scripts, and refine my skills or get into a CMS (like drupal) or a PHP framework. I found Wordpress very assuring and didn't feel trapped into crazy conventions, but I feel is not the right tool for this. I hate the CMS Page with the big textbox as I am used to code every page by hand my pages are not a title and a textbox. Got the feeling?

My php skills are sort of medium/low still, but I would like to hear some thoughts of what I should learn to take the next step!

Answer 1

I'd recommend taking a look at CodeIgniter.

Answer 2

A good framework will teach you exactly what you are hungry to learn. I second Jorge's suggestion of CodeIgniter. I was looking at that a lot until I decided to build one myself. BTW, I LOVE using my homebrew framework, and building it taught me A LOT so don't let anyone discourage you from reinventing the wheel if you really want to know how the wheel works.