Starting with CodeIgniter setup: suggestions & best practices

[eluser]Jelmer[/eluser]
@night_day
When starting out and if you got less of an opinion than me on the subject I'd recommend DMZ, it's both active and very powerfull.
When I chose I prefered RDM for a couple of reasons: I like the practice of clean models with all DB stuff separate; I prefer the query builder from RDM a lot over CI's AR; and it's faster. The first 2 however are the most important for making your choice, the speed arguement won't be of any signifigance for over 99% of CI based projects.

Even though the project is indeed pretty much dead I still use RDM as it was very reliable and fast for the documented use, rough edges only appear once you try very complex usage (and I fix any bugs where they appear as I know the code pretty well). For new projects I'll probably use either php.activerecord, Doctrine2 (if the project is very complex) or whatever comes of the new Fuel ORM we're currently rewriting. When PHP5.3 isn't an option I'll probably stay with RDM.