| I'd definetly go for the framework approach. After building apps with and without frameworks, its a lot less painful to build upon something which exists already. There are so many advantages to go framework, I can't tell everyone:
- frameworks are (mostly) under development, so you can benefit from trends and improvements in web development - frameworks are well tested - frameworks are more secure. Do you have all holes for XSS etc. closed? Are you sure? - frameworks have almost always a community behind it, so you benefit from other users knowledge and plugins - frameworks have plugins. You don't have to write anything from scratch, like DB connections, authorization or file uploads - frameworks have documentation. Unless you are the sole developer of your app, you really want to have good docs. Do frameworks have disadvantages? Sure, but I don't think it outweighs the advantages. |
Another benefit of using a framework is it lets you 'work' with other amazing coders. I have increased my php knowledge many times over by using symfony. Sometimes this happens because you just have to dive into the frameworks sourcecode to see what's going on.