I had the very same question before, and even implemented many of the common things that my application needed. But I am now looking at Drupal. In general w

I had the very same question before, and even implemented many of the common things that my application needed. But I am now looking at Drupal. In general whichever framework you would like to use, will have its own learning curve. Once you overcome that, it should be pretty easy and fast to start working. I think there are some obvious advantages in using a framework: 1- you don't have to reinvent a lot of the stuff 2- the solutions offered to you have passed all their tests as there are many people checking upon them, and many sites already using them 3- if you have a couple of ideas and are thinking of launching all, I think once you finish your first project you will see a huge advantage starting the other ones, and you will move a lot faster at the end if you pick the right framework, that will satisfy your current needs (the features and options you like to offer) and future needs (such as scalability), you will feel like you are working with a huge group of developers on your site. Its kind of like you have hired other developers and formed a team for yourself. Also make sure that the framework you pick will have a strong community as it will come handy. You should make a list of your requirements and make a chart of the frameworks and which ones satisfy what. And in general I would take the following into consideration when choosing a framework (depending on your needs you could add to this list) - Ease to install - Learning Curve - User Control - Session Control - Extensibility - Scalability - Themability - xHTML/CSS