The world of web development is constantly evolving, and new tools and technologies emerge every day, in addition to the current ones changing, frameworks like Laravel that are more versatile, but also have a longer learning curve, others like Django or similar or Go, are great, but they also have a high learning curve, with a more specific audience and these should be an “after” learning the basics of web technologies.

If reading this article, you are new to the world of programming and want to take the first steps in the world of web development, surely you already have at least some basics in web development with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but, you want to see persistently stored data, you want to add logic to your pages, you probably have some idea to develop a blog-type web project, online store, or something similar and you want to create something of your own to extend little by little and the CodeIgniter framework is for you.

CodeIgniter is ideal for taking the first steps and more

I experienced all this as I am narrating it, I began to create this same blog with CodeIgniter in its version 2 and I maintained it for many years, little by little I extended the application until it reached what it is now, which yes, it is a app is not immensely large and has several aspects to improve, but it is mine, I could see it evolve and it continues to evolve.

Although I recently migrated from CodeIgniter 3 to Laravel, and recently to Laravel 11, I could not have done all of this if I did not have the foundations with CodeIgniter to continue growing as a developer and why not, create some initial applications without many complications.

And CodeIgniter is excellent at this, creating your first apps, being able to move forward without the detours that other frameworks have and the best of all is that PHP is widely supported.

The problems that you can find with technologies that are not PHP is that they have a more specific audience, if you do a search for web servers you will see that if not all of them, the vast majority use PHP, with the Apache trilogy, MySQL and of course PHP, ready to do our projects economically, and this is where PHP comes in and your desire to learn it in all this, it is for people for you, who want to start their small projects and here you have a niche or possible business . that you can grow, where many people have an idea but don't know how to carry it out and YOU, who know how to program and want to learn how to create these first apps, already have everything served.

The thing is that although other frameworks are more powerful or have more options, they are not for everyone or they are not for small or medium-sized projects, which is where frameworks like CodeIgniter really shine, which are ideal for these projects and therefore a great candidate for learning to develop being first timers.

First steps in web development with CodeIgniter

Without a doubt, choosing CodeIgniter as the first framework to develop was one of the best decisions I have made in my life and that can be used as a basis to learn other frameworks and learn in an organized and efficient way and that can also be useful for you, by having a simple structure, be conservative in the code, widely scalable and programmable with a low learning curve, do not hesitate to develop in this technology.

What is CodeIgniter?

CodeIgniter is an open source web framework for PHP that allows you to create dynamic and scalable web applications quickly and efficiently; we can create all types of applications, from large scale to small, it is a framework that has been on the market for a long time, with slow but sustained development and it does not maintain a version of the framework for many years, that is, when we learn it, we will not have changes radical in a good period of time.

Advantages of CodeIgniter

1. Learning Facility: As we discussed above, CodeIgniter is known for its gentle or shallow learning curve. Its simple syntax and logical structure make it easy to understand and implement projects.
2. Performance: CodeIgniter is light and fast. Its MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture allows efficient processing and fast response from the server, many of the other frameworks have a variant of MVC, so why not learn it well from this framework.
3. Abundant Documentation: CodeIgniter has extensive official documentation and an active community. This makes it easier to solve problems and access useful resources. For my part, in this blog you will find a large number of resources. I also have a course and book on this technology that will help you go from 0 to 100 in CodeIgniter in one go. very simple way.
4. Integrated Security: CodeIgniter includes built-in security features, such as protection against XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) and CSRF (Cross-Site Request Forgery) attacks, it also has a module called shield for authentication and permissions, which is amazing and easy to use and implement, with this, you will be able to develop all types of applications that are not necessarily small, since CodeIgniter allows you to develop projects of all types and sizes.
5. Flexibility: CodeIgniter does not impose a rigid structure. You can adapt it according to your specific needs and take advantage of its libraries and helpers. Although we do not have many libraries for CodeIgniter, we have PHP ones that are easily included and adapted in this framework.
6. Database Compatibility: CodeIgniter is compatible with multiple database management systems, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite, all web frameworks use databases, and have an ORM, in CodeIgniter you can also use this structure.

Ideal Scenarios for CodeIgniter

1. Small and Medium Projects: CodeIgniter is ideal for medium or small sized web projects. Its agility and performance make it perfect for fast and efficient applications.
2. Rapid Prototype Development: If you need to create quick prototypes or MVPs (Minimum Viable Products), CodeIgniter allows you to develop basic functionalities in a short time.
3. Business Applications: CodeIgniter is a great choice for internal business applications or management systems.

As you can see, CodeIgniter allows you to develop all types of projects and as I have told you before, all frameworks have more similarities than differences and once you master CodeIgniter, you will be able to continue scaling to other technologies but that will be a topic for another article.