== Why A Framework Might Be Of Interest To You ==

If you answer 'yes' to any of the following questions, you could probably benefit from using a framework in your next project:
  * Do you have the sense you're cut and pasting a lot of code?
  * Are you performing the same repetitive tasks for each new project, ie: 
    * handling permissions
    * user authentication
    * separating your code from the website's look and feel
    * caching
    * site navigation
    * creating installers
  * Are you grafting together bits of other peoples' solutions, ending up with a mish-mash of coding styles and approaches?
  * Do you feel your time to market estimates could be shorter if your projects were more organised?
  * Do you have trouble getting new developers on the team up to speed with existing projects?
  * Have you experienced problems dividing project tasks up amongst developers because there was code overlap?
  * Do you want to be able to recycle code that solves distinct business problems, just by inserting it as a component and switching the look and feel?

Answering 'yes' to one or more of these points indicates you could probably benefit from the more systematic approach offered by a framework.  Check out some of the General/FrameworkFeatures that are available in this project.

There have also been some interesting comments in PHP circles recently on the use of frameworks:

=== from a sitepoint reader asking why bother with frameworks ===
''Because it's useful to get standard foundations, the same way to build an app. It may be harder at the beginnning but then everyone speaks the same language. It's a reason why Java is popular.''

=== from Alan Knowles dicussion of his Flexy framework ===
''The result of this framework is that 10-20% of the total code for a project is application specific. giving a huge reduction in code size, and improving readibilty and maintainability considerably.''

=== from Craig R. !McClanahan, creator of Struts ===
 * “Hello, world” examples do not help build real apps
 * Most developers did not wish to deal with low level server functionality
 * Many people building web apps were newcomers to [insert programming lang here], as well as newcomers to the web