Best starting point for a website with user management functionality

Question

I'm about to start creating a new website that has standard user management (customers login and handling (change customer details etc) + my own functionality. I'm looking for the most efficient way to do it. I know PHP/CSS/Jquery quite well.

I have looked into Drupal as a starting point and found it too cumbersome for my needs. CodeIgniter and PHPcake seems not to be efficient because I'll spend time learning the platform instead of developing (which I would love to do, but not currently).

It seems that what I need is a skeleton of PHP site that simply handles users functionality. Surprisingly I couldn't find one.

Could you recommend a starting point such as an open source website code that I can easily cut the user management part from? Or another option which is more streightforward than learning a new platform/framework?

Answer 1

Quite honestly, if you are going to use one of the existing platforms out there you are going to have to put the effort in to learning the architecture of it and then adapting to it to further develop on it.

Also, user management is a pain but really shouldn't take you THAT long to implement. If that's all you want, I'd say roll your own because then you are going to be that much more familiar with it. Anything that someone else has written you are going to have to learn about.

Answer 2

To be honest, to get started in a framework like CodeIgniter you shouldn't need more than 5 to 15 minutes of learning time (a CI "skeleton" is extremely easy to do).

Yes, it may have plenty of tools/helpers/libraries but for the most part the learning curve is extremely shallow.

As to the users functionality, there are a couple of user-made libraries that may suit your needs - a comprehensive list with detailed functionality can be found here: what-code-igniter-authentication-library-is-best

Answer 3

If all you want is authorization, start with Pear::Auth. It's probably a little less than you're looking for, but that may be preferable to a solution that's heavier than you desire.