Symfony vs. WordPress

[Jim Hatten]

Does anyone have any thoughts about Symfony vs. WordPress. Does anyone have experience with Symfony they wish to share?

One of my clients is really pushing Symfony (someone in a different department than theirs hired a different developer who is really pushing them on the idea of Symfony and they'd like it to be uniform throughout).

Jim Hatten
Ten Hats Design LLC

[Nick Pelton]

Disclosure: I'm a WordPress advocate :)

Symphony is an MVC development framework - not a Content Management System. Typically you need to roll-your-own CMS in that case, but there are some packages that add CMS like functionality. The advantage is building complex applications in a very structured and maintainable way (IE MVC) plus the package community has already solved a lot of common problems like user accounts/signons/etc. I've seen it in action and it's a really neat framework.

WordPress is a CMS, and *kinda* a framework (some would argue). It's far more mature in the realm of CMS and content management in general and has a great community of plugins for extending functionality - but if you need to add custom functionality that doesn't exist you'll need to build it yourself - meaning you need to make sure you build maintainable code

Both are very different tools for very different problems - and every project is unique. Can you share and insight on what your building?

- Nick Pelton

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[jus...@foell.org]

Jim,

I think you know what answer you're going to get in this forum. 

That being said, Symfony is a fine framework for building websites. My question would be regarding the design, is it going to be an evolutionary thing that changes bit-by-bit? Part of Symfony's MVC framework is the view component where the design will live, and while you can theoretically swap out one for another easily, I suspect the development time for creating a new "view" is going to be significantly longer than creating a new WordPress "theme."

Also, if you're the type that likes to start with an off-the-shelf theme, part of your work has already been completed. I think that's why most of us like and use WordPress as a rapid development framework.

Justin

[Martin Grider]

Apples to oranges. Symfony is not a CMS, but a PHP framework. There is a blogging module, but right on the github page, it says "WARNING The Blog Bundle is a "work in progress" and will only be complete when all the neessary pieces of the CMF are available".

This presentation should tell you a bit more: http://cmf.symfony.com/slides/bigpicture.html#1 (Hit space to page through it, that got me at first.) A couple of relevant bullet points: " -  Collection of modular tools to do content management - Not a ready-to-use application for end users".

[Jim Hatten]

I know what I'd prefer they used on the other end, but I'm thinking we're going to have to agree to something in this case (since there are other developers involved in another department than the one I'm contracted with).

[Jim Hatten]

Here's what the project entails:
It's a website for an educational center that provides information to special education advocates, parents, educators, state-and national-level department of education directors/staff. The other area is a community integration (i.e. workplace help center for employees with special needs and disabilities).

The other area needs to allow for digital files and publications (archived in mostly pdf formats) to be stored and downloaded.

The rest is all basic website redesign.

~Jim

[Tom Penney]

Comparing Wordpress and Symfony is like comparing a Chevrolet with a
robot used to build Toyotas.

Symfony is a set of tools used to build web applications from scratch.
It's used to build web applications which are completely different
than wordpress in the way they work under the hood.

- Tom

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[Nick Pelton]

Sounds like a website + intranet component - nothing WordPress can't do. 

If you’re developers are concerned with the custom stuff (which is probably why they are recommending Symfony), you could easily use WordPress to solve the website/archive requirements and built the help center on Symfony on a subdomain. 

A lot of ways to skin this one.

- Nick Pelton

[Jim Hatten]

Thanks guys! I've learned a lot and it was quite helpful. If nothing else, I was able to look at resources on the Internet to have some better understanding of the discussions we're going to be having. Always love this group to find solid answers.
~Jim

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[David Skarjune]

Jim,

As discussed, Framework vs CMS could be apples & oranges. Except in DrupalLand. Symfony is included in the core of Drupal 8, so you get an integration of the two. It's still in Alpha development, with no release date determined.  If you think this is interesting, then get ready to drink a barrel of KoolAid. ;-)  BTW, Not everyone in DrupalLand is happy and a small group may fork to maintain Drupal 7.

-David Skarjune

On Thursday, October 31, 2013 11:59:11 AM UTC-5, Jim Hatten wrote:

[Sherman Bausch]

Have forked already, actually.

http://backdropcms.org/

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[Nicholas Ciske]

<troll> Why fork Drupal when you could just switch to WordPress? </troll> ;-)

WordPress begat Ghost

Drupal begat BackDrop

Interesting to see the bifurcation of Pro vs. Amateur in both... and this discussion around the 10th anniversary of WP:

http://designisphilosophy.com/wordpress/wordpress-at-10-time-for-a-fork

On the Sympfony note: the learning curve is *brutal*. While just about anyone who knows PHP can pick up basic WP development in a day, you really need Symfony devs (or a several week burn in period) to make progress on a Symfony project. So costs are higher, talent is scarcer, etc. There are cons to a Symfony route...

But corporate IT rarely considers practical factors like these, they just want the new hotness, or a "more secure' platform... as if custom code not vetted and attacked daily by botnets is more secure (hint: it's probably not).

Ok, rant over... hope this was helpful ;-)

_________________________

Nick Ciske

http://thoughtrefinery.com/

@nciske