Preface

The well-known ExpressionEngine system is outstanding in all aspects. Perhaps, it is the best system. With it, you can create both simple business card websites and the most complicated systems practically for all occasions.

The only downside is it is a paid system at the cost of a few hundreds of dollars. And it is reasonable to annually pay also for updates and upgrades.

But that's not the half of it. Many third-party web developers (the most popular is Solspace) offer additional paid modules, plugins and extensions.

Therefore, the occurrence of the idea to create a free alternative was logical. Though already there is a lot of free systems (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla), they don't have the features which ExpressionEngine offers. The closest alternative is Textpattern. But it has no integration with a forum and a web shop, no multiple site support and many other things that ExpressionEngine offers. Therefore, I didn’t see a real alternative.

The first version of SparkFrame was developed with the CodeIgniter framework. But this framework was created for a specific commercial system, therefore it is functionally poor – for example, there is no work with members (registration, roles and rights management).

I had the luck to read a series of articles in the tutsplus.com site about creation of a PHP5 framework. These articles showed how it is easy to create a framework with the use of OOP. Already having known the functional capabilities of CodeIgniter and what CodeIgniter needs, in my opinion, I managed to create my own framework in conformity with all my requirements.

And after that the 2nd version of SparkFrame was developed. So, this new content management system

1. provides the full operational capability of the new framework,
2. offers a ready complete set of controllers and templates to quickly develop custom systems,
3. is a self-sufficient, multipurpose system.

And the system was being developed, so its further functional enhancement could be performed by means of addons, not to impair the stability of the core. So, the reliability will only be increasing during its further operation (because shortcomings of the core will be fixed without changing the core code).

This development is offered to the community as a free open source system.