Hi there Code Igniter community!

I guess I’ll start with a little bit about myself. I’m a young developer from Australia and while I don’t currently run any high profile websites, I’m hoping to harness the power of Code Igniter to do so in the future.

I’m going to develop a website which is, in a nutshell, a Social & Community Network for creative people. The general idea is that people will be attracted to the website’s articles and tutorials on ranges of topics on things like web animation, graphic design, making videos and programming. It’s sort of a way to help people improve their skills in the areas of interest so that they can be better at what they do and also produce more entertaining content quicker!

Thats a mouthful.

I must say I spent quite a bit of time trying to find the right framework and community for my needs.
I initially looked at modifying a content management system however because the needs of my website stretched between many different areas and modules that it bloated them and caused them to be extremely slow.
Then I looked at Drupal which was good but didn’t fit my needs so I looked at frameworks.

Symphony, Zend, CakePHP, Akelos, Code Igniter, just to name a few. I was initially drawn in by people exclaiming CakePHP’s excellence, but soon found it to be an organised mess. Even CakePHP was too restrictive for my needs and was even more difficult to grasp how it worked initially. Also the complete lack of a forum on their website or an “official” forum didn’t quite feel right to me.

So I looked at the other alternative, Code Igniter! I had initially overlooked this as people had said it lacked true power but having a closer look I am just absolutely amazed at how much of an awesome framework CI really is!

The MVC architecture is easy enough to manipulate for all sorts of content (not just databases!). Its not bloated (loading stuff I don’t need!) and it flows so extremely well. Performance is something that also came into consideration and I love how performance is a major factor in CI. Whats the point of building an awesome website if it slows down when lots of people start using it?

You guys already know this but I must say the Documentation (User Guide) was AWESOME and easy to follow. The other plus is these official forums, a very intelligent and active community! I’m even amazed how CI followed an extremely similar coding style to my own, so I picked it up in no time!

My hope is to become an active and contributing member and contributor to the Code Igniter community.
Hopefully I can share and also help others with problems and solutions encountered while developing my website.

I congratulate CI for having such an amazing product and an equally amazing community!

Hi, welcome to CI and the forums
I totally aggree with you, CI strikes the right balance of simplicity, flexability and power. It’s so easy for you to (metaphorically) bend it to do whatever you want.

And I wouldn’t go as far as saying we’re an intelligent community

Heya, from australia too!

do you have any sites that you’ve done for us to peruse??

netrosis - 02 July 2009 05:34 AM

I guess I’ll start with a little bit about myself. I’m a young developer from Australia and while I don’t currently run any high profile websites, I’m hoping to harness the power of Code Igniter to do so in the future.

Me too

netrosis - 02 July 2009 05:34 AM

I’m going to develop a website which is, in a nutshell, a Social & Community Network for creative people.

Let me know if you need a second hand to help out

yeah, if you need a third hand. gimme a holler!

karbonphyber - 05 July 2009 06:57 AM

Heya, from australia too!

do you have any sites that you’ve done for us to peruse??

Not really, at the moment anyway.
I have a bunch of designs but nothing that’s out there on the web.

I can however show you a preview of some of the website that I’m planning. Feedback would be appreciated!

I’ve tried to test this in as many browsers as I can (IE6, IE7, IE8, FireFox3, Chrome, Opera 9)

It seems to work fine in everything except Internet Explorer 6, which it tends to look a little screwed up but not horrible. Considering the target audience *shouldn’t* be using IE6 I think I’ll be ok. I may have to write some exceptions to clean it up a little.

None of the links work either, its just a design.

Syphex - Index Page
Syphex - Article Page

Feedback would be cool.
I’m especially concerned about the white text on a dark background, particularly on the article.

I’m also working on another site which I’m admin at, its an animation community based around one guy’s works. Its nothing big, we get about 1500 people visiting a day, but we’re working on a new design, since the old one seems to be a bit… well old. We’re using vBulletin which I’m starting to find to be outdated, and not easy to work with.

With that one we want to add a little functionality to the main website, such as notifying users if they have a new PM, showing their details, etc.
I don’t mind sending users to the vBulletin login page… but I can’t figure out how to do things like verify the cookies to determine who’s logged in.

The other problem is our news script, I mean if I was just pulling text from the database it’d be fine, but the problem comes with parsing the BBcode.
So if you know anything about it, I’d appreciate the help!

I did look at the vB user library in the wiki, and it didn’t end up working for me.

As for forums on my website, I’m planning on rewriting a sortof, application library framework, which will have a core to handle templating, user authentication, etc. Then you can plug in modules and they will work.

So you have the core, and if you want to run a forum, you paste the forum files, then enable the plugin, and the app framework will install the forum. Then if you install an articles software so users can write articles to be separate of the forums, it’ll do that too. If you wanna use a blog, it’ll handle it and you don’t have to “bridge” the users, etc.

I’m slightly concerned of how CI is still slightly limited by PHP4’s OOP implementation but it may just mean I need to write some extra code.