Here's what i would like to say on your pros and cons list. P: 1. open source code is exposed to the whole bunch of users doesn't necessarily mean the code wi

Here's what i would like to say on your pros and cons list. P: 1. open source code is exposed to the whole bunch of users doesn't necessarily mean the code will end up unsecured, let's take it as we get lots of contributor around to find and patch those security holes. 2. once you get working with PHP frameworks understanding the code will be easy. 3. why not bother looking at the framework code if you get benefits on every work onwards? C: 1. Most of the frameworks follow MVC separation, understanding that takes time, once you get the idea, writing code and using your existing code as plugins/libraries to the framework will be super easy. 2. The whole community is contributing, it will just take few posts in community forums or few minutes of googling to find the feature you are looking for. if you ended up coding the feature yourself, give it back to community. that is how you become part of the community and how the frameworks grow. In situation when you need to hire someone to work on your codebase, use of available opensource frameworks will save a lot. i will suggest any one of these frameworks to work with: https://github.com/tylerhall/simple-php-framework https://github.com/tylerhall/simple-php-framework (structured code) http://codeigniter.com http://codeigniter.com (easy to start with, very good documentation) http://www.symfony-project.org/ http://www.symfony-project.org/ (nice documentation yet steep learning curve, once you get it as easy as CodeIgniter) i personally appreciate your approach too, that is a lot of effort you put there, but if you don't feel like using frameworks such as Symfony/CodeIgniter etc.. at least you may want to workout your code in the MVC or HMVC structure.