"Helps out where you want help, then gets the hell out of your way". That is the highest compliment I can think of. If you are a PHP programmer, and you haven’t taken a moment to look at some of the various upcoming PHP frameworks, do yourself a favour and stop reading now, and go to codeigniter.

PHP has other promising frameworks, but for my money, Code Igniter is the best. Yes Rails has gotten a lot of hype lately (most of it deserved in my opinion), but if you’re looking for a no-fuss, no-muss framework to help you get stuff done in PHP - check out Code Igniter. In addition to a mature framework (it’s built on top of the excellent Expression Engine code), it is actively developed and improved (thank you Rick Ellis), and has a vibrant, active and helpful community built around it.

When I started writing BambooInvoice, I began the project using the Zend framework. It was nice(ish) but clearly unfinished. Then I discovered CakePHP. Now Cake is a very impressive piece of work, but it still felt to me too much like I was programming in "Cake", and not in PHP. Code Igniter is like Linux, it helps me do what I need to do, and trusts that I know what I’m doing.

So there you go, I've officially added my vote to the growing legions.