Whatever your taste in ORM mappers, templating, localization and other "magic", you can get away without a framework, but you will (in one way or the other) need to do all of the following:
- Define/create some controller or structure in how URLs map to different scripts/functions etc. That includes some "system" that you use (even just remembering) for where each app executes.
- Handle output and page parsing. If you want errors and other messages to always appear within your template and not before even the starting <html> tag or if you need to be able to set cookies or send other headers() before the output you will need to control output buffering (using ob_XX() functions)
- Authentication. Most (99%?) web apps need a user to be able to login. You can roll your own in this regard, but that will take skill and careful planning. You need to be able to specify which parts of your controller are available to which users, etc.. this can start getting complicated real soon.
You can roll your own, but you will actually be rolling out a framework.
So just realize you're not choosing between using a framework or not using a framework - you're choosing between using your framework or somebody else's.
- Define/create some controller or structure in how URLs map to different scripts/functions etc. That includes some "system" that you use (even just remembering) for where each app executes.
- Handle output and page parsing. If you want errors and other messages to always appear within your template and not before even the starting <html> tag or if you need to be able to set cookies or send other headers() before the output you will need to control output buffering (using ob_XX() functions)
- Authentication. Most (99%?) web apps need a user to be able to login. You can roll your own in this regard, but that will take skill and careful planning. You need to be able to specify which parts of your controller are available to which users, etc.. this can start getting complicated real soon.
You can roll your own, but you will actually be rolling out a framework.
So just realize you're not choosing between using a framework or not using a framework - you're choosing between using your framework or somebody else's.