Integrate PHP Applications (forms etc) into an CMS

Question

Following scenario:

We have to develop a lot of different forms and small or big php applications with Zend Framework. Those should be used in "any" kind of CMS System.

Is there a best practice to load remote content (internal network!)

One CMS Server - One Application server running apache with php.

PHP renders the html and returns it.

We have thought about:

• ajax calls (slow, and page does not load synchron)
• fopen with some kind of wrapper for timeout handling, caching

It must be possible to switch the cms at any time with a small amount of coding on cms side.

Answer 1

HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will carry over fine, but not PHP. Begin with a CMS and code for it.