• It utilizes CFCs for Controllers and Models in the way that Codeigniter uses classes.
• It comes with some very helpful “helpers” for all kinds of things including redirects, “flash” (no, not that kind) messages, and HTML display code.
• The online documentation is thorough and easy to navigate.

It’s missing a few things that I liked in Codeigniter, like being able create a query object once that’s available throughout a controller, but it’s only up to version 1.0.5 as of this writing, so I expect great things in the future.

I’m not going to go into any detail because I’m still a noob, but if you are looking to move from “anything goes” PHP to a framework that’s easy wrap your head around and provides a gateway to the MVC way of thinking, give CodeIgniter a try.

On a side note, one of the things that drew me to CodeIgniter was it’s relationship to Expression Engine (EE), and in particular, the upcoming 2.0 version that is being built with CodeIgniter. I thought this combination could be very powerful – having a CMS available for which you already could know the guts of it for extensibility, etc. However, after playing with the current version of EE, seeing the learning curve required, and thinking about the cost of each installation for commercial use (EE is not free), I’m not sure sure I’ll use it. That hasn’t dampened my enthusiasm for Codeigniter though. It can stand on it’s own for projects requiring custom development.