For the record, I use an extensively modified Kohana core system in my PHP programs.

However, other users should be reminded that authors of Kohana have a less than perfect track record with sanity. They have been previousely singled out for stupid/insulting class names (Naked_Women) as well as bizarre content (machine gun firing cats, hardcoded to show up on some URLs).

But I digress...

We've all come up with names that are odd at one time right?

Dood, seriously what does any of that even mean? I mean ya there are going to be amateur enthusiasts in any development community, which was in short the entire basis of what separated the Linux community from the UNIX elitists. Just Google: The Cathedral and the Bazaar, other than that please do digress...I'm listening.

I currently use Kohana 2.3.x for all my projects and highly recommend it. The 2.3 branch is very stable and is now managed by a team of developers that are committed to a stable API.

Some of my favorite features are: * very clean and well-documented core * autoloading libraries * completely modular (cascading filesystem) * integrated and easy to use ORM that can be used along side standard DB and query builder libraries. * very easy to customize * centralized template controller and views * very knowledgeable and helpful community * growing third-party module repository

I like that they don't force ORM on you. Personally I think the ORM is lacking and can cause things to be more complicated to do.

I typically use ORM for most models. But create custom DB methods within the model for more complicated queries. Having the standard DB library methods available within an ORM model makes Kohana very flexible.

I cant wait to get the rest of the tutorial done and show off all the awesomeness that I have found with Kohana.