Banshee

Banshee is a PHP website framework, which aims at being secure, fast and easy to use. It has a Model-View-Controller architecture (XSLT for the views).

Although it was designed to use MySQL as the database, other database applications can be used as well with only little effort. Ready to use modules like a forum, photo album, weblog, poll and a guestbook will save web developers a lot of work when creating a new website.

Easy to use libraries for e-mail, pagination, HTTP requests, database management, images, cryptography and many more are also included. Most software that can be used to create a website is either a framework or a Content Management System (CMS). The disadvantage of a framework is that it requires quite some time and work to build a website.

The disadvantage of a CMS is that in many cases it requires quite some knowledge about the CMS (and hacking) to extend its functionality. Banshee has none of these disadvantages as it is more of a hybrid, a framework with CMS functionality and ready-to-use modules. That makes Banshee actually a, what we call, Content Management Framework (CMF).

The reason for still describing it as a framework is because more people are familiar with that term than with CMF. Many frameworks require a lot of documentation reading before one can start using it. While creating Banshee, special attention has been given to an easy to read and understand structure. Where possible, Banshee creates a transparent layer on top of the default PHP functionality. For example, Developer can use $_SESSION as developer are used to. The Banshee session library takes care of the rest.