Business Networking Site and CMS; Which Framework?

[JZS]

My PHP is rusty, but I'm not letting that stop me. I've got a project my business is undertaking for our local area:

 

The project can be seen as a simplified linkedin, with the ability for users to register a company page, which will allocate a subdomain via cpanel. The company page will act as an independent webpage, with customizable theming and blocks/widgets and a simple blogging tool, much like that of a facebook status.

 

Registering a company page will have a monthly fee. The idea being, that these businesses are all too broke and cheap to pay for their own website, so we will provide this service to give them a space on the web.

 

People can register for free, update their profile, CV, references etc, post classified ads, organize events and a few other features.

 

So, my question is, although I've been coding PHP for 6 years, what would a good starting point be as to which framework I could utilize for a fairly rapid deployment of this idea?

[syed]

Hi JZS, it seems to me you are planning a long term project, which will consists of many users. I would not suggest going with a framework becuase it is quick to develop a website. You need to think about the long term too, what happends if the framework you use no longer exists or is no longer supported in the future.

[premiso]

Frameworks are great for projects like this. They keep coding standards consistent and allow for others to come on and code just by learning the construct of the framework.

 

My suggestion is Zend Framework, although it takes a bit of leg work to learn, it is a very nice and well designed framework.

 

Others are Code Igniter, Symfony, Cake...etc. A google search for "php frameworks" will show a bit more. But yea.