Hi

I'm searching the right PHP framework for me. There are so many out there but I think the best ones for me are the one I mentioned in the title.

I need the following:

- easy to learn
- easy template system
- built in functions like mail, auth, db...
- easy install (need to work on a normal shared hosting account)
- good documentation and community

Can someone recommend me one of them? Or is there a better framework?

Thanks
Michael

Best is a relative term. A comment on your criteria:

"easy to learn" ...
- this is relative to your web development experience. Again I would recommend actually trying out the frameworks you mentioned and see if they are easy to pick up. If you're part of a team, consider others as well in the evaluation process.

"easy template system"
- most of these frameworks are flexible to accomodate most templating system. Consider who will work with the templates. If they are PHP developers themselves, perhaps plain PHP will do. If they are designers and PHP is not an option, maybe consider Smarty. There are pros and cons as to what you choose (templating or not). I would shun away from a framework that strictly limits itself to a specific templating system.

"built in functions", "easy to install"
- aha, helpers system. The best way is still to review the framework's features, actually trying them out in a live development environment.

"good documentation"
- i myself prefer the docs as downloadable. I prefer CodeIgniter on this case as the docs as really high quality and fairly comprehensive. I've seen CakePHP's docs but I can't say it's the best. Can't comment on the others though.


Bottomline:
If you want to ask me, IMHO, I'd choose CodeIgniter. Note that I only so far have used CI and Cake and so far based on the criteria you've mentioned, CI fits the best bill and future projects of mine will now be based on CI. Why CI, for me, they don't impose a very strict structure and class dependencies/implementation style; but at the same time balances on features and more importantly on its design choices on "separation of concerns" (i.e. MVC).

Cheers!