Book Review: PHP5 CMS Framework Development

PHP5 CMS Framework Development is a 322 page book that covers all aspects of creating a full featured content management system (CMS) in PHP5. The author Martin Brampton has a history of developing extensions for the Mambo and Joomla CMS projects. He became lead developer of the CMS Mambo before starting his own CMS, Aliro. The book is split up into 14 chapters. The first is an introduction to CMS and PHP5 concepts and the remaining 13 each look at a key feature of the CMS.

The book starts by defining what a content management system is and what features it needs to have. It then gives some background into the Model View Controller and Object Relational concepts as well as the Factory, Singleton, Observer and Command design patterns. If you haven’t used a CMS before and don’t know PHP5 OOP, this chapter prepares you excellently for the rest of the book.

The remaining 13 chapters each cover a feature of the framework. This includes:

• Database abstraction
• Access control, user authentication
• Framework extensions/plugins
• Caching
• Internationalization
• Error handling
• Menus

Brampton has done a great job at explaining each feature before he shows any code. This ensures…