How do we get CodeIgniter back to the PHP framework of choice?

[eluser]treenef[/eluser]
How do we get Codeigniter to being the best PHP framework available? What must we do I would like to hear your opinions or any ellislab developers?

[eluser]InsiteFX[/eluser]
Wont happen, Like come on it's been over a year and they still have not found a new owner.

[eluser]ivantcholakov[/eluser]
@treenef

In your personal opinion which one is the best now?

[eluser]treenef[/eluser]
[quote author="ivantcholakov" date="1403822447"]@treenef

In your personal opinion which one is the best now?[/quote]

Probably laravel if I was totally honest but that's only because everyone jumps on the bandwagon. However, I think if codeigniter retained development, definitely codeigniter. I fully understand Ellislab pursuing a commercialised product like expression engine.

At the moment I see only narf as the making core updates.I would love to bring it back to the top where is deserves to be.

What are your thoughts?

[eluser]InsiteFX[/eluser]
I have been switching over to FuelPHP that's were all the old time CI developers went and created it.

But it is up to you to pick your own framework.

I wont leave CI because I still have to support it.

[eluser]ivantcholakov[/eluser]
@treenef

Technically CodeIgniter could be improved a lot, and its set of features could be increased. At its stage of development It has the privileged position to learn from the mistakes of other projects.

What could be done?

1. License - MIT.
2. CodeIgniter 3 - released.
3. Open feature planning - I don't mean "design by committee" (wrong way), I mean predictability, transparency.
4. Predictable release dates.

IMO this is the minimum to be done if CodeIgniter wants just to be alive.

How it could become the best? - Set the minimum system requirement to PHP 5.6 and work hard for two years. :-)

[eluser]skunkbad[/eluser]
The real appeal to CI has always been the ease of use. Beginner or intermediate level PHP developers can benefit from "shortcuts" and functionality that handles day to day tasks, eliminating the need to re-invent the wheel. That's about where the benefits of using CI stop.

An MIT license was mentioned above, and that would be a good start. We've debated the license over and over, but for my needs and the needs of my customers, I had to switch to another framework. I shouldn't need a lawyer to advise me on the technicalities of a software license, and I'm not going to explain and work with the CI 3.x license.

CI has long protected its users by offering dependable backwards compatibility. When big changes were needed, detailed instructions made updating fairly painless. That's great, but if you look at other frameworks, and you look at PHP itself, CI just hasn't kept up with the times. In order to attract mainstream developers, CI would need a complete rewrite.

A complete rewrite is not actually as bad as it seems. I started doing this for myself, and developed a proprietary framework that in many ways feels like CI. This is the framework I use now. The thing is, as I worked on the framework, I realized how little CI code I really needed, which is not much. Using Composer, packages from packagist.org, and a DI container that extends Sensiolabs Pimple, I've got a beautiful foundation for any project, AND it's just how I want it.

I imagine if CI created a new framework that was modern and cool, it would be kind of like mine. I come back here occasionally to see what's new, wondering about a new owner. If a new owner is coming soon, they'd surely want to implement big changes, else the framework will need a second funeral.

[eluser]treenef[/eluser]
Can you further explain what beautiful foundation you have. What features have you created ?

[eluser]skunkbad[/eluser]
[quote author="treenef" date="1403858370"]Can you further explain what beautiful foundation you have. What features have you created ?[/quote]

My framework is built off of Pimple. Dependency injection is used in all classes, however, most classes also have a static class counterpart that allows classes to be used through calls to static methods. Auth is included. A password generator class is included. An XML class is included. Since I am the only one using the framework, I can also package in all of my proprietary js, scss, and grunt files. All of this is in a private Git repo, and when I want to start a project, I simply run Composer on a custom composer.json file, and the whole project foundation is setup.

My upload class does more than just upload to a filesystem. It can send files that were uploaded to another server via SFTP. It can also store the files in the database.

I use Swiftmailer for email. DOMPDF is used for PDF generation. phpseclib is used for SFTP. Stripe PHP is pulled in for credit card processing. And a major break-away from CI is that I use Doctrine DBAL for database abstraction. I never liked ORM, so I don't pull in the whole Doctrine code, but users of ORM would be able to pull it in, and nothing would break because DBAL is part of ORM.

This framework is tailored to my coding preferences, and is for me. There's the beauty. Compared to Symfony, Laravel, Fuel, Kohana, or any other framework I've tried, my framework still has a very CI feel to it. I built it that way because CI is easy to use. I don't need a framework that is complicated.

At this point, only 6 classes are derived from CI. Most others, like the Session class, were completely rewritten, only preserving the names of methods and the way the methods are used. Ripping apart each class and rewriting it, or improving it, or dropping features that I didn't like or need was a huge learning experience. The benefit is that if something is going wrong, or buggy, I know exactly what is going on. I recommend that everyone with good PHP skills attempt to write their own framework, because it becomes exactly what you want it to be.

[eluser]treenef[/eluser]
Thank you for the in depth reply, do you have any CMS, if so is it possible to see some screenshots?